The HHS Tracking Accountability in Government Grants System (TAGGS) is fully compliant with the federal government’s transition from the use of the DUNS number to the new Unique Entity Identifier (UEI) as the primary means of entity identification for federal awards government-wide.

Transition from DUNS to UEI

On April 4, 2022, the federal government will stop using the DUNS as the official entity identifier across all systems. Instead, entities doing business with the federal government will use a UEI created in SAM.gov.

The transition from DUNS to UEI makes it easier for entities by providing a single location, SAM.gov, to complete the following:

  • Request a UEI and register to do business with the U.S. Government;
  • Make any updates to the entity’s legal business name and physical address associated with the UEI; and
  • Find customer support at a single helpdesk for all UEI and entity registration issues.

More information regarding the federal government’s transition to UEI may be found at GSA’s website.

TAGGS Updates to Comply with UEI Implementation

TAGGS historically identified a grant recipient based on the Employee Identification Number (EIN) and used the name and address information located in the HHS Payment Management System (PMS). HHS’s migration from EIN to DUNS number, which was completed on September 21, 2021, represented the first phase in adopting the SAM-generated UEI, as indicated in the diagram above. The Phase 1 transition grouped and highlighted award activity based on a recipient DUNS number and included the legal entity information registered in SAM.gov.

Although most award recipients had a one-to-one relationship between the EIN and DUNS, some recipients had a many-to-one relationship. As a result, HHS updated the TAGGS data to reflect these recipients as multiple entities or combined under a single DUNS number, as appropriate, to accommodate the Phase 2 transition to the new UEI. The second phase, which was completed on March 31, 2022, continues to display DUNS on the TAGGS website to provide the cross-referencing to UEI capability for legacy awards (i.e., awards issued under a DUNS).

In addition, HHS updated the TAGGS website with the following changes:

  • The "Recipient" data element name changed to "Legal Entity Name";
  • The "Data Dictionary" includes updated data element descriptions for DUNS and UEI;
  • Tabular data and exports include UEI data;
  • Recipient pages display legacy awards by DUNS number for cross-referencing purposes to the new UEI numbers; and
  • The Award, Advanced, and Site search pages display time-of-award legal entity information, while the Recipient search page includes a search by UEI option and displays the information from SAM.gov.