3.0 GLOSSARY OF TERMS
Advance Contract Award Notice - An Advance Contract Award Notice (ACAN) is a public notice indicating to the supplier community that a department or agency intends to award a good, service or construction contract to a pre-identified supplier, believed to be the only one capable of performing the work, thereby allowing other suppliers to signal their interest in bidding by submitting a statement of capabilities. If no other supplier submits a statement of capabilities that meets the requirements set out in the ACAN, the contracting officer may then proceed with awarding the contract to the pre-identified supplier. Otherwise, the contracting officer will then begin the standard opportunity procedure.
Administrative (Admin) Account - An administrative account (or Company Account, see below) with elevated access. This account is used to manage a company’s PODS account and user account access. See
Section 2.2 for additional details.
Agency - The originating source of the opportunity (i.e., the government office or company that issued the opportunity for goods or services).
Bid-Match Account - A type of account that allows you to receive notifications on new opportunities based on specified matching criteria (see
Section 2.3 for additional details).
CAPTCHA - A type of challenge–response test used to determine if the user is human.
Category - See GSIN.
Company Account - Every PODS customer has exactly one company account; it represents the company as a whole. Each company account has at least one user account associated with it, which is the administrator of the company account.
CPV - Common Procurement Vocabulary. Developed by the European Union as a tool to improve transparency and efficiency in public procurement.
Customer - A customer is a reference to a specific agency to which a company is supplying goods or services as part of a current or potential contract. This customer does not need to be tied to a specific agency in PODS. This feature allows users of PODS to track their own current and potential contracts that did not originate from PODS.
GSIN - Goods and Services Identification Number codes identify generic product descriptions for procurement activities. In PODS, GSIN codes (sometimes referred to as categories) are used to classify groups of opportunities in terms of the good or service required.
Keyword - A word or collection of words (together treated as a phrase) that is matched against text in the title, details or reference number of an opportunity. Single words are matched “as is”. If multiple words are used (a phrase), results are returned if those words are found in the specified order.
NAICS - North American Industry Classification System. A classification of business establishments by type of economic activity. It is used by government and business in Canada, Mexico and the United States of America.
Opportunity - In PODS, an opportunity is synonymous with a tender.
Opportunity Provider - The hosting site of an opportunity, such as buyandsell.gc.ca.
Region - A geographic location that identifies where an opportunity was issued.
Self-Serve Account - A type of account for which no notifications for new opportunities are received. The user must manually search for and find opportunities themselves using PODS search features (see
Section 2.4 for additional details).
UNSPSC - United Nations Standard Products and Services Code. An open, global, multi-sector standard for efficient, accurate classification of products and services.
User Account - A User Account is associated with an employee of the company and acts as a means to access and interact with PODS. See Section 2.2 for additional details.