2032H5-22-Q-00114-Amendment 0001.pdf

OMB Control No. 1505-0080

AMENDMENT OF SOLICITATION/MODIFICATION OF CONTRACT

1. CONTRACT ID CODE PAGE OF PAGES

2. AMENDMENT/MODIFICATION NO. 4. REQUISITION/PURCHASE REQ. NO. 5. PROJECT NO. (If applicable)

3. EFFECTIVE DATE

08/11/2022 5000138362, 5000141647

6. ISSUED BY CODE 3431 7. ADMINISTERED BY (If other than Item 6) CODE

Internal Revenue Service Procurement 5000 Ellin Road Lanham, MD 20706

Leona M. Brown 240-613-5175

See Item 6

8. NAME AND ADDRESS OF CONTRACTOR (No. Street, county, State and ZIP: Code)

To All Offerors

(x) 9A. AMENDMENT OF SOLICITATION

NO. 2032H5-22-Q-00114

9B. DATED (SEE ITEM 11)

08/02/2022

10A. MODIFICATION OF CONTRACT/ORDER NO.

x

10B. DATED (SEE ITEM 13)

CODE FACILITY CODE

11. THIS ITEM ONLY APPLIES TO AMENDMENTS OF SOLICITATIONS

is not extended.

Offers must acknowledge receipt of this amendment prior to the hour and date specified in the solicitation or as amended, by one of the following methods:

(a) By completing Items 8 and 15 and returning _____ copies of the amendment; (b) By acknowledging receipt of this amendment on each copy of the offer submitted; or (c) By separate letter or telegram which includes a reference to the solicitation and amendment numbers. FAILURE OF YOUR ACKNOWLEDGMENT TO BE RECEIVED AT THE PLACE DESIGNATED FOR THE RECEIPT OF OFFERS PRIOR TO THE HOUR AND DATA SPECIFIED MAY RESULT IN REJECTION OF YOUR OFFER. If by virtue of this amendment you desire to change an offer already submitted, such change may be made by telegram or letter, provided each telegram or letter makes reference to the solicitation and this amendment, and is received prior to the opening hour and data specified.

12. ACCOUNTING AND APPROPRIATION DATA (If required)

13. THIS ITEM APPLIES ONLY TO MODIFICATIONS OF CONTRACTS/ORDERS,

IT MODIFIES THE CONTRACT/ORDER NO. AS DESCRIBED IN ITEM 14.

(x) A. THIS CHANGE ORDER IS ISSUED PURSUANT TO: (Specify authority) THE CHANGES SET FORTH IN ITEM 14 ARE MADE IN THE CONTRACT ORDER NO. IN ITEM 10A.

B. THE ABOVE NUMBERED CONTRACT/ORDER IS MODIFIED TO REFLECT THE ADMINISTRATIVE CHANGES (such as changes in paying office, appropriation date, etc.) SET FORTH IN ITEM 14, PURSUANT TO THE AUTHORITY OF FAR 43.103(b).

C. THIS SUPPLEMENTAL AGREEMENT IS ENTERED INTO PURSUANT TO AUTHORITY OF:

D. OTHER Specify type of modification and authority)

E. IMPORTANT: Contractor is not, is required to sign this document and return ____ copies to the issuing office.

14. DESCRIPTION OF AMENDMENT/MODIFICATION (Organized by UCF section headings, including solicitation/contract subject matter where feasible.)

THE PURPOSE OF THIS AMENDMENT IS AS FOLLOWS:

1. The closing date of the RFQ is hereby extended to 10:00 a.m.(EST), Wednesday, August 24, 2022.

2. RFQ questions and responses are hereby provided in accordance with Attachment 1 entitled, “RFQ Questions and Responses”.

3. PWS Section 3, Scope of Work and Description of Tasks, is hereby revised in accordance with Attachment 2, entitled, "PWS Section 3, Revised".

Except at provided herein, all terms and conditions of the document referenced in Item 9A or 10A, as heretofore changed, remains unchanged and in full force and effect.

15A. NAME AND TITLE OF SIGNER (Type or print) 16A. NAME AND TITLE OF CONTRACTING OFFICER (Type or print)

LEONA BROWN 240-613-5175

15B. CONTRACTOR/OFFEROR 15C. DATE SIGNED 16B. UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 16C. DATE SIGNED

(Signature of person authorized to sign)

BY _____________________________________________

(Signature of Contracting Officer)

NSN 7540-01-152-8070 30-105 STANDARD FORM 30 (REV. 10-83)

PREVIOUS EDITION UNUSABLE Computer Generated Prescribed by GSA

FAR (48 CFR) 53.243

X 1

X The above numbered solicitation is amended as set forth in Item 14. The hour and date specified for receipt of Offers is extended, X

2032H5-22-Q-00114, Amendment 0001

Attachment 1

RFQ QUESTIONS AND RESPONSES

1. Can the government provide the list of contractor labor categories (LCATs) and number for each LCAT supporting the current contract?

Response: The current labor-mix is proprietary to the incumbent contractor.

2. Can the government provide a pricing template for this requirement, including a list of desired labor categories and hours?

Response: A pricing template will not be provided; however, the Government’s estimated level of effort is 4 full time database specialists, 1 ¾ time Project Manager with database experience, and 1 half-time system security specialist. However, the offeror may propose whatever mix of labor they feel best meets the requirements.

3. Can the government share a list of desired staff positions for this new (recompeted) requirement?

Response: See Question #2.

4. Are there one or more key personnel? If yes, please provide the LCAT and requirements.

Response: See Question #2. Key personnel will not be designated under this requirement.

5. What position(s) are the Skill Requirements outlined in section 4 (pg. 44) for?

Response: As stated in the response to Question #2, the proposed labor-mix is at the discretion of the offeror, however the skill listed under Section 4 must be provided.

6. Can the government provide labor category descriptions and requirements for all positions required?

Response: See Questions #2 and #5.

7. What software/tools is the CDW database based on?

Response: The main CDW database is built on Sybase but other databases may be used in the ETL process such as Oracle, Postgresql, and SQL Server.

8. What is the size of the CDW database (GB, TB, etc.)?

Response: The CDW database is roughly 2 Petabytes

9. Is the CDW database consist of one or more databases?

Response: It is one large data warehouse separated by schemas dependent on the various data feeds.

10. What environments currently exist for the ETL pipeline and CDW database (e.g., development, test, staging, production, etc.)?

Response: There is a Dev, Stage, and Production setup for the CDW database. Most ETLs run scripts on the Dev and Stage databases before being promoted to Prod.

11. Is the CDW database and ETL pipeline currently hosted on-premises or in the cloud? If in the cloud, hosted under which provider (e.g., AWS, Azure, Google)?

Response: The current CDW database and ETL pipeline are on-prem with no plans to change that.

12. What tool(s) and/or programming languages are used for the ETL code and pipeline?

Response: The ETL code and pipeline mostly bash scripts, but some may be Python, R, or SAS.

13. How often are a full ETL and incremental refreshes performed?

Response: Full ETL and incremental refreshes are performed monthly.

14. What tool is used for data modelling?

Response: It varies depending on the ETL scripts, but mostly bash scripts and some may be Python, R, or SAS.

15. What tool is used for data quality?

Response: Mostly bash scripts are used to check for data quality.

16. Is some of the data coming in through REST services, or through secured

FTP?

Response: The majority of data is received through EFTU file transfer or mainframe extracts. Some may require direct data pulls from the source database.

17. Besides through secured file transfer, how else does the remaining source data come into the CDW system (e.g., user input through intranet/internet website, CD-ROM, USB drives)?

Response: The majority of data is received through EFTU file transfer or mainframe extracts. Some may require direct data pulls from the source database.

18. Is the contractor responsible for maintaining the system side of services (i.e., database patching or software upgrade, server patching or OS upgrade, virtual machine/cloud services) that host the CDW database and ETL pipeline?

Response: No.

19. Is the contractor responsible for any ODC costs (e.g., software or hardware licenses, travel)? If yes, please explain.

Response: No, but if travel is contemplated, a specific line item will be added to the task order in accordance with Section 8 of the PWS.

20. What are the top 3 challenges that the government want to overcome on this project?

Response: All of the Government’s requirements are in the PWS. Proposal shall be based on those requirements.

21. What is the estimated award date?

Response: The projected period of performance of the task order is stated in the Schedule of Supplies/Services beginning of page 2 of the RFQ.

22. Can the due date for proposals be extended by 15 days?

Response: The due date for proposals is extended to 10:00 a.m.(EST), Wednesday, August 24, 2022.

23. PWS, Page 38, Item - How many Team members are on the current contract?

Response: See Question #1.

24. PWS, Page 38, Item 1 - Is there an incumbent on this contract? If so, could you please provide the incumbent name, current contract number, duration, historical level of effort and value of the contract.

Response: The incumbent contractor is Analytica LLC. The contract number is TIRNO- 17-T-00092 and the duration is September 29, 2017 through September 28, 2022. The level of effort is proprietary the contractor.

25. PWS, Page 102, Item 2 - Is there a chance the date can be extended by 1 week due to the short time between q and a and the due date?

Response: See Question #22.

26. PWS, Page 38, Item 1 - Will there be a need to retain any current contracted team members?

Response: Offerors shall propose their own labor mix.

27. PWS, Page 39, Item 3 - What is the current technology stack hosting or Cloud, OS, DB, WEB Front End?

Response: The servers are using RHEL 7 OS. The CDW database is Sybase.

28. PWS, Page 39, Item 3.2 - What types of applications are being used by the current staff to manage the work, such as office tools, project management tools, risk applications, financial applications, governance applications? Are any of these COTS products and/or FedRAMP applications?

Response: Gitlab, Jira, and SharePoint are the primary documentation and project management tools.

29. Attachment 3, Page 80 - What type of implementation methodology IRS team uses today? Is it Waterfall or Agile?

Response: The current implementation methodology is Agile.

30. Pg. 38, 1.2 Data Sources, Formats, and Updates - The sections states, "In some cases, data are pushed to the CDW environment via scheduled, secure data transfers. In other cases, CDW staff pull the data directly from source systems. - What ETL tool is used to bring various data into the CDW?

Response: Most ETL is written in bash script form. There are various database client tools used depending on the source system. There is not one universal tool used by all ETL pipelines.

31. Pg. 38, 1.2 Data Sources, Formats, and Updates - The sections states, "In some cases, data are pushed to the CDW environment via scheduled, secure data transfers. In other cases, CDW staff pull the data directly from source systems." - How often is data brought into the CDW systems, i.e. how often are the ETL jobs run?

Response: Data is usually pulled and loaded to CDW on a monthly basis, though some are weekly.

32. Pg. 38, 1.2 Data Sources, Formats, and Updates - Does the CDW obtain data from external entities/sources?

Response: Yes.

33. Pg. 40, 3.2 Ramp-Up Knowledge Transfer - This section states, "This task includes meeting with the IRS subject matter experts frequently to gather any tacit knowledge related to the CDW intranet site infrastructure, reports, as well as relevant tasks or programs in development.” - Does knowledge transfer occur with only IRS SMEs or is there also an incumbent contractor through which this process will occur?

If there is an incumbent, who is the contractor, what is the contract number, and how many contractor personnel support this task?

Response: Knowledge transfer will be government only.

34. Pg. 41, 3.4 Data Delivery and Process Maturity - How do existing ETL processes handle data validation and data errors? For example, if the ETL jobs encounter a bad data from source, how does the system handle this out of place errors?

Response: Each ETL process is different, so it depends on the scripts being executed.

Bad data could either be handled through a reissuance from the source or an ETL script modification on our end to accommodate legitimate changes from the source.

35. Pg. 41, 3.4 Data Delivery and Process Maturity - Currently, if an ETL job fails, do the DBA team have to rerun the jobs and notify customers? If so, is there an associated SLA?

Response: If ETL jobs fail, the contractor will work with IRS staff to determine the issue and rectify the problem. IRS staff will handle customer relations, announcements, and source-side relationships to help solve any issues.

36. Pg. 41, 3.4 Data Delivery and Process Maturity - How many data marts does the CDW produce?

Response: CDW is a data warehouse and does not have any defined data marts.

37. Pg. 54, 23. FISMA - IT Systems / Applications or Services - The section makes numerous references to the Cloud Services Provider (CSP). Are the existing CDW systems in the cloud or on premises? If existing systems are on premise, is there a formalized plan for moving data into the cloud? Who is the cloud service provider (CSP)?

Response: The CDW systems are on-prem, there is no current CSP and no plan for moving the data to a cloud solution. This language is standard and must be included in all information technology acquisitions.

38. Pg. 102, 2. Questions / Quotation Due Dates - The section states, "RFQ Closing Date: Quotes must be received by 10:00 a.m. EST, Friday, August 19, 2022 via e-mail to the Contracting Officer at Leona.m.brown@irs.gov."We would like to confirm that the submission is required via email as listed and not submitted through eBuy?

Will the IRS extend the deadline by 1 week to 8/26/2022?

Response: The submission is required via e-mail to the Contracting Officer at Leona.m.brown@irs.gov. The due date has been revised per Question #22.

39. Section 1.2, PWS Page 39, Paragraph 1 - Per RFQ section 1.2 and to help determine the LOE, how many data sources are processed by week, month, quarter, semi-annually, annually, and on ad-hoc timeframes?

Response: 5-10 are weekly, 90 are monthly, 4 are quarterly, and 2 are annually.

40. Section 3.5, PWS, Page 42, Paragraph 2 - How many different ETL pipelines are currently in use?

Response: There are about 120.

41. Section 3.6, PWS, Page 42, Paragraph 3 - Please provide number of ETL programs.

Response: About 120.

42. Section 3.6, PWS, Page 42, Paragraph 3 - Please provide number of stored procedures.

Response: The number is unknown; it is dependent on each individual ETL.

43. Section 1.2, and 3.5, PWS, Page 39, Paragraph 2/Page 42, Paragraph 2 - How many data transfer failures over the past year (or tracked period) required contractor intervention to resolve?

Response: This metric has not been tracked. If an ETL process or any part of the pipeline fails then it is that person’s responsibility to report it to IRS management and work to fix the issue to the best of their ability.

44. Section 3.4, PWS, Page 41, Paragraph 7 - How many new data sources does the Government anticipate adding over the foreseeable future?

Response: CDW usually adds 3-5 each year.

mailto:Leona.m.brown@irs.gov

45. Section 3.4, PWS, Page 41, Paragraph 6 - What language(s)/tools are the ETL scripts developed in?

Response: Mostly bash shell scripts but some may be Python, R, or SAS.

46. Section 3.3, PWS, Page 41, Paragraph 4 - How many existing data models are in scope?

Response: There are 13.

47. Section 3.3, PWS, Page 41, Paragraph 4 - How many data models does the Government anticipate adding in the foreseeable future?

Response: CDW usually adds 3-5 new data feeds per year. Not all of them will fall under this contract but some may.

48. Section 3.3, PWS, Page 41, Paragraph 5 - Are any COTS tools used to measure data quality? If so, which tools?

Response: No

49. PWS - 3. Scope of Work and Description of Tasks, Paragraph 2, Pg. 39 - As this contract entails significant software development and testing capabilities from the Prime Offeror, would the government consider adding under Section 4, Skill Requirements (page 44 1st paragraph) that the "Prime Contractor shall be appraised at a minimum Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) Development Level 3 under Version 2.0 at the time of submission.

Response: No.

50. RFQ 13. Place of Performance, Paragraph 1, pg. 46 - As part of the requirements to be on government site and be in a location that is close enough to support government meetings within a two-hour window, will the government consider requiring the Prime offeror to have an office within 2 miles of the government site located at 1111 Constitution Avenue, NW Washington DC 20224 and 77 K Street, NE Washington DC 20002?.

Response: No, this requirement will not be added.

51. PWS -17. Security, Paragraph 1, Pg. 47 - The RFP details various security and internal control requirements within the PWS. Based upon these requirements and the necessity to establish a Prime Offerors ability to meet these requirements, would the government consider incorporating under Section 17 that "The Prime Offeror shall be certified under ISO/IEC 27001, information security management at the time of submission." As ISO 27001 is an industry standard security appraisal for government contractors ensuring they meet minimum capabilities for organizational security maturity.

Response: No, this requirement will not be added.

52. SF 1449, 52.219-14 Limitations on Subcontracting (DEVIATION SEP 2021), Paragraph 2, Pg. 101 - If an offeror submits a proposal either independently or with a subcontractor, is their submission of a proposal deemed a representation of the offeror’s size standard at the time of RFQ closing under FAR 19.301-1 Representation by the offeror.

Response: The offeror’s eligibility with regard to it’s 8(a) status will be confirmed by the Small Business Administration (SBA).

53. SF 1449, 52.219-11 Special 8(a) Contract Conditions (Jan 2017), 52.219-12 Special 8(a) Subcontract Conditions (Oct 2019), 52.219-17 Section 8(a) Award (Oct 2019), 52.219-18 Notification of Competition Limited to Eligible 8(a) Participants (Mar 2020). Paragraph 2, Pg. 101 - If a prime offeror submits a proposal either independently or with a subcontractor, is their submission of a proposal deemed a representation of the prime offeror’s 8a socio-economic status at the time of RFQ closing under FAR 19.301-1 Representation by the offeror?

Response: See Question #52.

54. Special 8(a) Contract Conditions, 52.219-11; 52.204-13 System for Award Management Maintenance (OCT 2018), Pg. 101 - As the intent of the Government is to encourage small business participation, will the Government consider including System for Award Management (SAM) in addition to its review of size/socio-economic status at the time of RFQ Closing as GSA elibrary may not accurately reflect a firm’s small business status under the solicitation NAICS code.

Response: See Question #52.

55. Management Approach, Paragraph 3, Pg. 103 - The government states "offerors should clearly describe how the organizational composition, roles, responsibilities and capabilities will facilitate work efforts and effectively yield solutions in accordance with the criteria in Evaluation Factor 2, Management Approach", will the government consider requiring prime offerors provide a staffing matrix within the Management Approach Section 3.1 and the Evaluation Criteria, with proposed personnel, names and experience?

Response: This will not be added as a requirement, but offerors may express their capabilities however they deem appropriate as long as their response is in accordance with the RFQ instructions. However, since key personnel will not be designated under this task order, offerors must express their capabilities at the firm level and not rely on the capabilities of specific, individual, at-will employees. Emphasis should be placed on how the offeror plans to utilize the labor categories they propose, not on the identities of the individuals.

56. RFQ NOTICES, CONDITIONS AND INSTRUCTIONS; 3. Preparation of Quotations - 3.1 Volume I, Technical Information, Paragraph 3, Pg. 103 - The government states "offerors should clearly describe how the organizational composition, roles, responsibilities and capabilities will facilitate work efforts and effectively yield solutions in accordance with the criteria in Evaluation Factor 2, Management Approach". Based upon the government requesting the roles, would the government consider adding a sentence to this section: "Offerors should provide a list of proposed key management personnel and provide a summary staffing table with proposed personnel, name, and experience that will perform under this contract"

Response: See Question #55.

57. RFQ NOTICES, CONDITIONS AND INSTRUCTIONS; 3. Preparation of Quotations - 3.1 Volume I, Technical Information, Paragraph 3, Pg. 103 - Will the government consider requiring as part of submission that offerors include resumes of the staff being proposed as Key Management Personnel (with a limit of 3 total pages) as part of its submission under Technical Quote Required Documentation?

Response: See Question #55.

58. RFQ NOTICES, CONDITIONS AND INSTRUCTIONS; 3. Preparation of Quotations - 3.1 Volume I, Technical Information, Paragraph 2, Pg. 103 - The Government states that "The contractor’s proposed Technical Quote shall demonstrate the contractor’s ability to deliver and comply with the full range of services described in the RFQ’s PWS" but appears to not have requested any past performance experience to be able to assess the Offeror's Technical Capabilities. Would the government consider amending Section 1 Offeror's Technical Quote to allocate 5 pages of the 25 pages requiring that the Prime Offeror submit up to 5 past performance examples as part of this section?

Response: This will not be added as a requirement, but offerors may express their capabilities however they deem appropriate as long as their response is in accordance with the RFQ instructions.

59. RFQ 3.1 Volume I, Technical Information, Paragraph 1-4, Pg. 103 - The Government states that "The contractor’s proposed Technical Quote shall demonstrate the contractor’s ability to deliver and comply with the full range of services described in the RFQ’s PWS" but appears to not have requested any past performance experience to be able to assess the Offerors Technical Capabilities. If not provided in a separate section, should offerors include past performance tables, with basic information such as client contact information, size, period of performance, and project summary information for scope relevancy as part of Section 1 Offerors Technical Quote?

Response: This will not be added as a requirement, but offerors may express their capabilities however they deem appropriate as long as their response is in accordance with the RFQ instructions.

60. RFQ 3.1 Volume I, Technical Information, Paragraph 1-4, Pg. 103 - The Government states that "The contractor’s proposed Technical Quote shall demonstrate the contractor’s ability to deliver and comply with the full range of services described in the RFQ’s PWS". To address this requirement and ensure that the government can clearly evaluate whether the Prime Offeror can address these requirements, should Offerors limit any project examples or past performance that is being submitted to only examples of the Prime Contractor?

Response: Offeror’s may propose subcontractor capabilities as long as any proposed subcontracting arrangements are in accordance with FAR 52.219-14, Limitations on Subcontracting, and the RFQ Notices, Conditions and Instructions. The proposal must also clearly indicate which services/capabilities are offered by the subcontractor.

61. RFQ NOTICES, CONDITIONS AND INSTRUCTIONS; 3. Preparation of Quotations - 3.1 Volume I, Technical Information, Paragraph 2, Pg. 103 - Based upon the solicitation requirements it appears the government has not provided a space for offerors to provide Past Performance, will the government consider requiring prime offerors provide five relevant past performance examples within the last three years?

Response: Past performance is not an evaluation factor under this requirement.

62. RFQ page 103, Para 3 - Instruction’s document gave the page limits as 25 pages for Technical Volume. Requesting to exclude the Cover Page, Cover Letter, Table of Contents, Table of Exhibits from the page count.

Response: Those documents are excluded from the page count.

63. Can we request the Government for the number of FTEs or total man-hours (level of effort) the current incumbent’s contract put on work?

Response: See Question #1.

64. Can we request to know the current contract number that is being performed by the incumbent company, and also name of the Incumbent company?

Response: See Question #24.

65. Can the IRS please confirm if this is a new project. If not, can the agency please confirm the incumbent name and Contract number?

Response: See Question #24.

66. Section 3.9 Transition Out Support, Page 43 - What is the duration of Transition In and Transition Out?

Response: Transition-In and Transition-Out are each one month.

67. Can the agency please define the Key Personnel for this Project?

Response: Key personnel are not designated for this requirement.

68. Section 3.2 Volume II, Pricing Information, Page 104 - For Vol II - Pricing Information, can the IRS please confirm whether the number of hours for Project Manager, SME II and Program Manager given be changed?

Response: The labor categories and hours on page 104 are arbitrary and used for example purposes only to indicate how the price quote should be prepared. They have no relevance to the actual requirement.

69. Section 3.6 System Security Documentation and Reporting, Page 42 - Can the IRS please share the current status of System Security Documentation and Reporting?

Response: This is an ongoing process to evaluate system security and report project statuses on a basis defined by IRS management.

70. Section 3.3 Data Model and Data Quality, Page 41 - Please provide detailed requirements for Data Models and Data Quality any information about current state, technologies used, data size, and the number of jobs managed.

Response: Bash shell scripts, SQL scripts, stored procedures, Java, and NiFi are the technologies used. Feeds vary from 1 GB to 5 TB. There are 13 feeds for this contract so 13 jobs will need to be managed.

71. Section 3.5 Database Administration, Page 41 - Are open source tools allowed to maintain the ETL data feeds?

Response: Yes, CDW uses RHEL-based OS tools, Python, R, Postgresql, and other open source tools for ETL.

72. Is there an incumbent for this project?

Response: See Question #24.

73. Section 1.2 - Can you provide an approximate number of data sources that are fed into the CDW?

Response: The approximate number is 120.

74. Is there an estimate on the number of the reporting systems that will be linked to the CDW that the vendor will be maintaining?

Response: The number of reporting systems is 13.

75. Does the IRS currently have an CDW ETL process in place? If yes, what tools are being used for ETL?

Response: CDW uses mostly bash shell scripting and SQL scripting to perform ETL.

76. Is there a preferred cloud platform for hosting the CDW? Any preference for platforms such as Teradata, Snowflake, Redshift, etc.?

Response: The CDW system is on-prem and will remain so for the foreseeable future.

77. Does having past experience in a particular ETL tool or CDW platform provide a competitive advantage to the vendor?

Response: Offerors will be evaluated in accordance with the criteria set forth in the

RFQ.

78. Given the increase in the volume of data in the future, does the IRS intend to upgrade the existing CDW to a Big Data platform?

Response: No.

79. Section 3, Page 39 - Can the government provide us with the current staff structure (staffing mix) that is supporting these task areas?

Response: See Question #1.

80. Section 3.2, Page 40 - In the RFQ the government mentions a Ramp-up Knowledge Transfer. This usually means vendors would be transferring knowledge from an incumbent. Can the government provide information on the Incumbent?

Response: See Questions #24 and #33.

81. Section 3, Page 40 - In the RFQ the government provides number of queries per day executed against the Volume: On a given month how many data qualities issues do your run into?

Response: This varies greatly depending on the source system and the ETL staff’s understanding of the data.

82. Section 3.4, Page 42 - Government mentions 5 data sources; Can we receive a data dictionary and the current volume and monthly processing volume? For example: Number of ETL Scripts and pipelines?

Response: This information is kept on an IRS internal SharePoint and cannot be shared until the contract is awarded.

83. Section 3, Page 41 - Are they facing any challenges with the CDW system?

IS there a backlog of upcoming enhancements for the CDW system that this RFQ supports? Can we get a copy of that?

Response: The main issue/challenge this contract should address is producing monthly data updates for the 13 data sets the contracting staff will be responsible for. CDW does maintain a backlog of potential improvements and enhancements, but it is stored on an internal SharePoint. The backlog is managed by the IRS and will brief the contracting team on specific items assigned to them from the backlog.

84. Section 3.3, Page 41 - Can get the government provide information on the data feeds models etc?

Response: These are stored on the IRS SharePoint site and will be accessible when the contract is awarded.

85. Section 3.3, Page 41 - GFI associated with the current CDW system?

Response: Each team member receives a government issued laptop and ID badge.

86. Section 3.10 - The govt has asked us to price out the "Additional tasks" can the govt provide us with detailed requirements of backlog for the additional work so the team is sized correctly?

Response: The “additional tasks” would represent no more that 20% of the yearly cost and would be extensions of work required under other requirements sections.

87. We would like to know in reference to the Past Performance, Can the Government please advise if offerors can submit PPQs instead of CPARS?

Response: The RFQ does not request CPARS.

88. We note that the instructions regarding past performances of a contractor refer only to CPARS. This would effectively exclude any proposals from companies that had been subcontractors and performed the specific work the proposal targets. Is it the government's position that only prime vendors who have CPARS for past performance may participate in the acquisition process for RFQ 2032H5-22-Q-00114? Would you please confirm that there will be no Past Performance Questionnaire that would obtain a performance review of work performed by a subcontractor by their primary contractor?

Response: See Question #87.

Attachment 2

PWS SECTION 3, REVISED

1. PWS Section 3, Scope of Work and Description of Tasks, is hereby revised to read:

“The purpose of this requirement is to provide data analysis, process improvement recommendations, and research and evaluation of emerging technologies in support of RAAS Compliance Data Warehouse (CDW) operations. These services will support the optimization of RAAS data availability and analytics to provide improved services and value to RAAS stakeholders.

Improvements include but are not limited to ETL automation, database table optimization, data model development and optimization, data quality assurance, research and development of new data source pipelines, and documenting and reporting on system security vulnerabilities and mitigations.”

2. The following language is hereby deleted:

“This engagement involves consulting and development support for process and design improvements to the CDW intranet site, which is used to disseminate metadata, technical documentation, guides, manuals, and other information.

Examples include, but are not limited to, identifying opportunities to update formats, page layouts, and other publication design features; recommending improvements to the organization and classification of materials to facilitate more efficient search and navigation; and designing, developing, and testing new solutions to extend or enhance the current online environment.

The Contractor shall provide programming support and maintenance of the CDW intranet site, including the infrastructure used to populate the intranet site with metadata and statistics as well as the development and maintenance of a variety of stored procedures and web-based reports on the IRS systems. Development and testing will be based on interfaces, language elements, and technologies such as HTML, JavaScript, the Microsoft .NET framework, ASP.NET, Visual Studio, Visual Source Safe, and tools from Corda Technologies for charts and geographic maps.”