IRS Response to RFI Qus for Both RFIs _ Designers and Expert.pdf

IRS Responses to Consolidated Questions received in response to BOTH RFI’s for

“Notice Redesign and Simplification - Designers Support” (02062024) and

“Expert Services for Redesign of Notices” (02062024-1)

Qu # Docu-ment

Section/

Page Question/Recommendation Government Response

1 RFI

General

Is this project considered as a potential new requirement or is there an incumbent contract currently performing these services? If there are incumbent vendor(s), would you be able to provide the contract details?

Both project requirements would be considered brand-new. There is no contract history for both.

However, the Office of Taxpayer Correspondence

(OTC) does have a contract that provides a host of services including the redesign of some (i.e., a dozen or so) notices/letters and they have provided advice on. This contract also includes training, the creation of a plan for handling unrelated items, and a variety of other responsibilities.

IRS Task Order# 2043FY-22-F-00062

Vendor: ASR ANALYTICS, LLC

[Note: This contract is unrelated to the Expert

Service acquisition; and this contract is generally unrelated to the Redesign Notice acquisition, except that there may be some minimal collaboration with this vendor and some notices considered by the Contractor may have been previously redesigned by this vendor.]

2 RFI

Is there an estimated value available for this potential requirement? Is it estimated to be greater than $250,000

For the Notices Redesign, the Government roughly estimates $3-6M for this requirement.

For the Expert Service, the Government roughly estimates $1-3M for this requirement.

ment

Section/

Page Question/Recommendation Government Response

3 RFI

[Expert Services RFI only]

Does the current system use an off the shelf solution?

The Government has not engaged expert services described in the RFI and there is no current system related to such services.

4 RFI

Are the notice templates in a Microsoft word documents or a proprietary format?

The templates are Microsoft Word documents.

5 RFI

Is there a need for a cloud-based solution?

The need is for expert services as described in the

RFI, rather than for a cloud-based solution.

6 RFI

Is your current setup similar to e.g. Web

Browser based user connects to irs.gov and once the user is authenticated, there will be a handshake with a gateway service to a database that holds the user information.

There will be separate database that holds the notices templates, once the business rules are satisfied the appropriate template will be populated with user information and sent to Kinkos/FedEx for land mail.

The need is for expert services as described in the

RFI, and there is no current setup.

7 PWS

[Notice Redesign RFI only]

Can say more about the needed testing, focus groups, and surveys that are mentioned in the RFQ but not the PWS.

To test the effectiveness and taxpayer response to certain redesigned notices and letters, those notices and letters will be selected for testing, focus groups and/or surveys. That will be conducted by IRS

Research, Applied Analytics, and Statistics

(RAAS) and a contractor providing expert services.

ment

Section/

Page Question/Recommendation Government Response

The Contractor providing notice redesign services will apply lessons learned from testing, focus groups and/or surveys to the further redesign of notices and letters.

8 PWS

[Notice Redesign RFI only]

We are wondering if IRS anticipates focusing grouping all 1200 forms, just certain types, etc. Will this activity happen up front as we test prototypes, or throughout the three years? This will help us understand if we think the volume is achievable in the time frame.

The Government does anticipate grouping the approximately 1,200 notices and letters into categories for efficiency. The Government will have done this prior to engaging a Contractor, but is open to considering other groupings based on the

Contractor’s recommendation.

9 RFI

Will the contractor who provides Subject

Matter Experts and a technical assessment of IRS's correspondence processes also be able to bid and if selected for award perform the correspondence tool redesign?

Yes.