5000175960_PWS_BTA 4.4.24_v3.pdf

Performance Work Statement

Business Tax Account (BTA)

1 Consideration and Payment General

The contractor shall provide the services described in the Performance Work Statement (PWS), Sections 6 to 7. Except as otherwise specified in this order, the contractor shall furnish the necessary personnel, services, travel, supplies, materials and otherwise do all things necessary for or incident to the performance of the work set forth herein.

This is a hybrid firm fixed price (FFP) / Labor Hour (LH) task order. Refer to Alliant 2 Labor

Pricing for Contract Line-Item Number (CLIN) Structure for pricing for the base period core tasks, and all options, including optional tasks.

Compensation for Fixed Price Tasks:

The Contractor shall be compensated for the successful completion of the fixed price tasks as follows and as set forth in the Alliant 2 Labor Pricing. The applicable unit price for FFP shall be a unit price for the time period in which the services are estimated to be performed, as agreed to by the Government and the Contractor.

Section 6.2: Task Area – Program Management Support

Section 6.3: Task Area – Technical Integration

Section 6.4: Task Area – Testing and Test Automation

Section 6.5: Task Area – Business Analyst Support

Section 6.6: Task Area – Requirements Engineering Support

Section 6.7: Task Area – Engineering and Architecture Support

Section 7: Task Area – Operation and Maintenance Production SupportError! Reference source not found.

Compensation for Labor Hours Tasks:

The Contractor shall be compensated for the number of hours actually incurred at the fixed loaded hourly rates for the Labor Hour tasks, if exercised, as set forth in the Alliant 2 Labor

Pricing for the following LH tasks:

Section 6.2.5: Task Area – Program Management Support (OPTIONAL)

The estimated hours per labor category are for budgeting purposes only. The number of hours used for each category may exceed or be less that the estimate by category, as long as the ceiling price for each individual task (tasks 6.2.5) is not exceeded. The Government shall not be obligated to pay any amount in excess of the ceiling price, nor is the contractor obligated to continue to perform if to do so would exceed the ceiling price.

For Labor hour or hybrid type executed CLINs, the contractor shall notify the Contracting

Officer when 75% of the labor hour funds have been expended under each CLIN.

1.1 Contract Pricing

The base period and each option period include optional tasks and line items in support of

Business Tax Account (BTA) Applications DevSecOps, Infrastructure and Support Services.

Core tasks 1 – 6 are for severable services. Task 7 for Transition In, and all optional tasks (8-12) are for non-severable services. Optional requirements, at the discretion of the Government, may be exercised at the same time, may not be exercised at the same time, or may not be exercised.

Contractor performance of any option without execution of a modification to the task order by the Contracting Officer is the contractor acting at its own risk and the Government is not obligated to pay or reimburse the contractor. All options are subject to availability of funds and may be unilaterally exercised by the Government.

Period Severable Services

Non-

Severable

Services

Total

Order

Section 6.2:

Program

Management

Support

Section

6.3:

Technical

Integration

Section 6.4

Testing and

Test

Automation

Section

6.5:

Business

Analysis

Support

Section 6.6:

Requirements

Engineering

Support

Section 6.7:

Engineering and

Architecture

Support

Section 6.2.5:

Project

Management

Support

(Optional)

Base $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $

Option

Year 1

2 BACKGROUND

In August 2022, Congress enacted the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), giving the Internal

Revenue Service (IRS) a historic opportunity to transform the administration of the tax system and the services provided to taxpayers.

Shortly after the enactment, IRS developed a strategy plan and received funding to execute the

Taxpayer Experience provision that lay out IRS’s vision and bring the intent of the Taxpayer

First Act. The IRS has an aggressive timeline to revolutionize tax administration in the US for the 253 million citizens who interact with the IRS annually and ensure that the $3.6 trillion of federal revenue that the IRS collects annually will continue.

The IRS developed The Taxpayer Experience Strategy (TXS) that identified the taxpayer experience is the cornerstone of the IRS mission and must go beyond customer service to solve problems. TXS encompasses all taxpayer transactions with the IRS across services, compliance, and other program areas throughout the taxpayer experience with the organization.

https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p5426.pdf

The IRS has been mandated by Congress to rapidly implement the capabilities for business taxpayer experience. Because of this, the IRS has a very time sensitive requirements to aggressively deliver the taxpayer experience capabilities within the next 2 years. To support the aggressive delivery of capabilities and speed to market, it would be desire for the vendor to have a secure cloud environment validated by IRS Cyber (including Pub. 4812) and enterprise standards to develop IRS capabilities within the vendor’s environment.

In addition to the roadmap, the vendor will be responsible for delivering the IT capabilities listed below:

1. The Digital and Mobile Adaptive Forms (DMAF)

2. The New Tax Transcript Type "Entity Transcript"

3. Support IRA Objective 1.8

Fiscal Year 24/25 Notional Scope:

3 PURPOSE

The focus of this task order is to enhance business taxpayers experience by encompassing their interactions with the IRS across service, compliance, and other program areas. Business https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p3744.pdf taxpayers expect the IRS to provide convenient access to easy-to-understand information when they need it. Implementing the Taxpayer Experience Strategy will give business taxpayers the information they need to understand and comply with their taxes. As a result, business taxpayers should have more confidence and trust in the IRS. The Experience was designed as a holistic strategy to meet the needs of all taxpayers and other entities that rely on the IRS for information and services. Capabilities that are scalable across all taxpayer segments, including individuals, domestic and international businesses, tax-exempt organizations, governmental entities, as well as private industry partners and other communities will be developed.

4 SCOPE

The scope of work is the contractor to provide a comprehensive solution that will transform the way business taxpayers interact with the IRS by providing a one-stop digital self-service solution that supports filing, data, and communication needs. The IRS is seeking a contractor with knowledge on digital integration activities, including collaboration with business partners and IT delivery partners. The contractor shall provide strategic guidance and oversight, technical advisory support, architecture, requirements, agile methodology and development, and product management expertise. It is desired for the contractor to be a subject matter expert (SME) with knowledge on the Taxpayer Experience Platform, IRS legacy systems, data, and business units.

Contractor personnel quoted have enough knowledge, skills, and experience identified to accomplish designated tasks within each Task Area.

The outcomes shall be the following:

• Increase overall digital interactions with the IRS and reduce paper and phone volumes.

• Implement innovative technologies to rapidly deliver customer-centric, self-service digital capabilities that help business taxpayers manage their taxes.

• Provide product development support with an emphasis on agile, test-driven development, and continuous integration methodologies to assist and enhance efforts to secure new applications.

• Provide personnel for planning including analysis, recommendations, and execution to support the delivery of working Webapps capabilities while, interfacing with IRS leadership teams to ensure overall delivery is timely and meets functionality requirements.

• Work collaboratively with Government designated points-of-contact to define requirements, provide infrastructure environments, and deliver functional capabilities.

• Furnish all necessary services, qualified personnel, material, and methodologies as needed and approved by IRS to perform agile IT program/project, and development support services for Webapps /online applications.

The activities and responsibilities of the contractor will include those identified under the task areas listed below.

5 OBJECTIVE

The IRS has chosen a strategy for application development that will maintain an IRS staff presence but outsources most of the work, which alleviates resource shortages in the IRS IT organization while maintaining IRS oversight and direction for product development.

The objective of the acquisition is to implement, develop, test, and Operations and Maintenance

(O&M) supporting the capabilities that will dramatically improve services to help business taxpayers meet their obligations and receive the tax incentives for which they are eligible.

• Increase overall digital interactions with the IRS and reduce paper and phone volumes.

• Fulfill directives/objectives outlined in the IRS Strategic Plan, Taxpayer First Act, NTA

2020 Report, and IT Mod Business Plan.

• Use innovative technologies to rapidly deliver customer-centric, self-service digital capabilities that help business taxpayers manage their taxes.

6 TASKS

6.1 RELEASE DEVELOPMENT

The IRS is seeking product development support with an emphasis on agile, test-driven development, and continuous integration methodologies to assist and enhance efforts to secure new applications. IRS has begun to scale its development activities and considering various models. The Contractor shall provide personnel for performing technical analysis, recommendations, execution, and test to support the delivery of working Business Tax Account

(BTA) capabilities while, interfacing with IRS leadership teams to ensure overall delivery is timely and meets business and technical functionality requirements.

The Contractor shall work collaboratively with Government designated points-of-contacts and technical team to define requirements and deliver functional capabilities. The initial infrastructure for BTA has already been designed and deployed for initial product launch in

2023. The Contractor shall furnish all necessary services, qualified personnel, material, and methodologies as needed and approved by IRS to perform agile IT program/project, and development support services for BTA application.

• Develop capabilities that support access by taxpayers and others to their information at any time through the development of web-based interfaces and account structures.

• Address common customer service issues by reducing the need to use the call center, walk in the office or other methods that require a significant investment in the taxpayer’s time.

• Support the IRS transition its current development environment to establish and continuously improve a disciplined practice that increases delivery velocity, quality, and job satisfaction, while reducing cost and risk.

• Knowledge on agile software development methodologies characterized by incremental and iterative processes where releases are produced in close collaboration with the product owners and (Privacy Government Liaison, and Disclosure) PGLD with a focus on test driven development, and continuous integration to deliver code and functionality.

• Contractors support multiple development teams from start to finish, regardless of how many layers of the architecture it crosses and will develop a ready-to-ship feature package.

• The contracting teams will continually synchronize their activities to manage project and product development dependencies through regularly scrums and scheduled cadence meetings. The contractor shall provide team size to be between 20 to 25 people with the expectation that more teams will be added to handle new scope rather than increasing the team size. IRS is expecting 7 development teams in FY24 to support the capabilities scoped to be delivered by September 2024 through August 2026.

• Contractor shall provide user interface development.

• Designing, developing, testing, and deploying software codes.

• Integration - working with other IRS organizations and contractors to support integration efforts as well as identifying best practices for facilitating integration for system engineering solutions. Support implementation and integration of engineered designs into operational systems using operational (EOps) processes and procedures.

• Testing - coordinating and performing demonstrations and conducting unit level, system, and user testing to be performed before the conclusion of each iteration.

o Documenting and reporting testing results while adhering to IRS requirements relative to product quality requirement.

o Identifying agile test results reports that are appropriate for IRS iterative delivery projects.

o Utilizing test driven development approach, as applicable, to support the incremental development of high-quality code.

DESIRED OUTCOME: The delivery of Web Applications products, specifically working software code at the end of each iteration.

6.2 PROGRAM MANAGEMENT SUPPORT

The contractor shall support the planning, management, and execution of projects that comprise the IRS Enterprise Program Management Office (EPMO) BTA program and releases, applying expertise rooted in project management best practices. The contractor shall support project planning and management, milestone status tracking and reviews, risks, and issue identification, tracking and resolution and participation in program and release level activities. Project support shall align with the IRS-selected Agile development path, methodology, and delivery approach.

• Support project planning and tailoring to refine application of paths, methodologies, and approaches to fit project needs.

• Provide coaching support to assist in IRS adoption and execution of incremental development and delivery approaches.

• Draft, review, and update project management documentation in accordance with IRS guidelines and templates.

• Develop and maintain project schedule and work breakdown schedule.

• Monitor, track, review, and update project status, and provide analysis to ensure that all impacts are identified early in the project planning.

• Support the development and maintain a configurable set of project guidance, documents, and plans to be tailored to each project.

• Support facilitating lessons learned reviews with continuous development, documentation, communication, and application of lessons learned.

• Support ALL project-related reviews. Examples include Project/Release Readiness

Reviews, Sprint Reviews, and Project/Release Milestone Exit Reviews.

• Strategic Planning: Support the alignment of IT requirements/ Information Resource

Management (IRM) plans with strategic business plans and program initiatives.

• Management Improvements: support implementation of improved systems and business practices to optimize productivity and service delivery operations (e.g., analysis, implementation of improvements in the flow of IT work and program processes and tool utilization, including business system analysis, identification of requirements for streamlining, re-engineering, or re-structuring internal systems/business processes.

• Support executives briefing and report status.

DESIRED OUTCOME: BTA project has the planning and management guidance and insight necessary to successfully deploy assigned capabilities. Lessons learned from other programs, releases, and projects are effectively applied to minimize and mitigate project risks and deficiencies.

6.2.1 COORDINATE A PROJECT KICK-OFF MEETING

The contractor shall schedule, coordinate, and host a Project Kick-Off Meeting at the location approved by the Government. The meeting shall provide an introduction between the contractor personnel and Government personnel who will be involved with the Task Order (TO). The meeting shall provide the opportunity to discuss technical, management, and security issues, and travel authorization and reporting procedures. At a minimum, the attendees shall include the contractor’s Key Personnel, the Program Manager(s), other relevant Government personnel, the

Contracting Officer (CO), and the Contracting Officer's Representative (COR).

At least three days prior to the Project Kick-Off Meeting, the contractor shall provide a Project

Kick-Off Meeting Agenda for review and approval by the COR and the PM prior to finalizing.

The agenda shall include, at a minimum, the following topics/deliverables:

a. Points of Contact (POCs) for all parties.

b. Personnel discussion (i.e., roles and responsibilities and lines of communication between contractor and Government).

c. Project Staffing Plan and status.

d. Transition-In Plan

e. Financial reporting and invoicing requirements.

f. Baseline Quality Control Plan (QMP) or Service Level Agreement

The Government will provide the contractor with the number of Government participants for the

Project Kick-Off Meeting, and the contractor shall provide copies of the presentation for all present.

The contractor shall draft and provide a Project Kick-Off Meeting Minutes Report documenting the Project Kick-Off Meeting discussion and capturing any action items.

6.2.2 PREPARE A MONTHLY STATUS REPORT (MSR)

The contractor shall develop and provide an MSR. The MSR shall include the following:

a. Activities during the reporting period, by task (include ongoing activities, new activities, and activities completed, and progress to date on all above-mentioned activities). Each section shall start with a brief description of the task.

b. Problems and corrective actions taken. Also include issues or concerns and proposed resolutions to address them.

c. Personnel gains, losses, and status (security clearance, etc.).

d. Government actions required.

e. Schedule (show major tasks, milestones, and deliverables; planned and actual start and completion dates for each).

f. Accumulated invoiced amount for each Contract Line-Item Number (CLIN) up to the previous month.

6.2.3 PROVIDE QUALITY MANAGEMENT

The contractor shall identify and implement its approach for providing and ensuring quality throughout its solution to meet the requirements of the TO. The contractor shall provide a

Quality Management Plan (QCP) and maintain and update it as changes in the program processes are identified. The contractor’s QCP shall describe the application of the appropriate methodology (i.e., quality control and/or quality assurance) for accomplishing TO performance expectations and objectives. They shall describe how the appropriate methodology integrates with the Government’s requirements.

6.2.4 PROGRAM INTEGRATION

The contractor shall support the establishment and execution of stakeholder engagement processes and models, including analysis, documentation, and management of program level action items, dependencies, risks, and gaps. The contractor shall also support the identification, as well as the consistent definition, communication, and application of standards, processes, methodologies, and approaches that are common to multiple EPMO programs and/or designated for EPMO-wide adoption or compliance.

Representative activities shall include:

Support the recommended stakeholder engagement processes, as well as the interaction model to facilitate engagement between the EPMO, IRS business, PGLD, Bureau of the Fiscal Service

(BFS), and IT delivery partners.

• Support the creation and maintenance of the program Integrated Master Schedule (IMS) by providing key project, release, stakeholder, and delivery partner activities, milestones, dependencies, and integration points.

• Identify, specify, and communicate common or EPMO-wide standards, processes, methodologies, and approaches.

• Provide coaching as needed to facilitate consistent and correct adoption or execution within and between EPMO programs.

• Establish, coordinate, and/or facilitate technical sessions such as Integrated Project

Teams (IPTs) at regular cadence for all projects within BTA, effectively tracking activities, tasks, status, blockers, risks, mitigations.

• Communicate project status timely and ensuring constant progress against the established plan.

DESIRED OUTCOME: Efforts are aligned across the EPMO to avoid service and capability duplication and disruption, while achieving cost efficiencies. Programs receive information and guidance needed to understand and consistently apply common standards, processes, methodologies, and approaches. Program dependencies are continuously identified, managed, and addressed to minimize impacts to successful capability delivery.

6.2.5 PROJECT MANAGEMENT SUPPORT (OPTIONAL)

Program Management in this area differs from Contractor Program Management of the Blanket

Purchase Agreement (BPA) or individual task orders. Program Management in this section primarily refers to the delivery of specific Web Apps Program Management tasks or deliverables to execute the Web Apps Program; however, may be used by other programs and projects.

Program management support would include activities at the program management level inclusive of but not limited to:

• Process management functions such as risk management, change request management, development, or update of various program documents such as Requirement Management

Plan; Program or Project Charters; Test Plan, etc. and input into executive briefings based on data gathering.

The IRS requires program management support to support Agile development teams and the overall Agile development process as identified by the Program Management and Integration

Manager. This includes information technology (IT) program and project management support services for agile software development efforts in accordance with applicable IRS IT One

Software Development Lifecycle (OneSDLC) and other IT program-related processes. The activities and responsibilities may include those listed below; however, specific activities will be fully defined in individual task orders.

Deliverable Activities include but are not limited to support for:

• Program management leadership to include program initiation and long-term planning.

• Product long-term release planning and scope management

• Supporting governance and reviews

• Implementing Agile change and configuration management

• Supporting documentation management

• Facilitating risk and issue management

• High-level technical integration and deployment planning

• Technical and solution analyses and recommendations

• Technical reviews

• Requirements and user story development and management at the epic or capability level.

A user story is a tool used in Agile software development to capture a description of a software feature from an end-user perspective. The user story describes the type of user, what they want and why. A user story helps to create a simplified description of a requirement.

• Program and product communication management

• Provide Agile transformation consulting to assist the IRS with identifying and removing process, technology, and organizational obstacles to moving forward with Agile development best practices.

DESIRED OUTCOME: Provide sufficient technical capability to support multiple development team efforts and the goals of the Program tailored to the planning and delivery of Web

Applications products.

The IRS requires project management support to lead Agile development teams as identified by the Delivery Manager. The activities and responsibilities can include:

Deliverable Activities include but are not limited to support for:

• Product initiation and planning activities.

• Requirements and user story development, decomposition, and planning.

• Ensuring product delivery according to plan.

• Documentation creation and management related to the activity.

• Adherence to established configuration and change management principles.

• Conducting and supporting technical assessments.

• Assisting IRS personnel with technical integration and deployment planning.

• Ensuring collaborative communications and knowledge transfer is accomplished.

DESIRED OUTCOME: Ensure that the IRS Delivery Manager has the ability to rapidly acquire personnel with Agile project management skills.

6.3 TECHNICAL INTEGRATION

The contractor shall provide systems engineering and integration services to support upfront identification of program dependencies and integration points, as well as continuous monitoring, management, and response to anticipate and mitigate associated impacts to successful delivery of any EPMO program. Contractor integration support shall span the entire lifecycle of any program from program initiation through delivery and operation of program capabilities.

Representative activities shall include:

• Identify and manage technical dependencies and integration points at the EPMO-level, as well as those within and between EPMO programs, releases, and projects.

• Identify and manage technical dependencies and integration points between supporting systems, processes, policies, technologies, organizations, delivery partners, project teams, and any other identified stakeholder groups.

• Provide upfront and continuous requirements analysis and engineering to understand, document, and communicate how non-functional requirements further define, refine, and constrain functional requirements.

• Identify, integrate, and manage dependencies and constraints arising from the intersection of functional and non-functional requirements where non-functional requirements are those that specify solution quality and assurance attributes including security, privacy, availability, reliability, and performance.

• Provide continuous requirements refinement and decomposition to produce system, project, and “build-to” requirements needed to sufficiently inform development efforts.

• Establish, maintain, and manage traceability between all levels and types of requirements from program initiation through design, development, testing, delivery, and operational acceptance.

• Perform technical integration planning.

• Provide technical integration support across multiple internal and external projects for testing.

• Provide strategy and technical support for the application and integration of tools needed for program execution including tools for program management, development, and testing.

• Conduct impact analyses of technical dependencies make recommendations for resolution, and ensure technical decisions are communicated to all components of the program and owners of impacted upstream and downstream systems.

• Manage and maintain traceability from Technical Integration Plans, including development, build, release, and verification schedules, to the specific, approved functional requirements.

• Support research and analysis, assessment, and Independent Verification and Validation

(IV&V) efforts to establish or confirm accuracy, completeness, sufficiency, appropriateness, and/or effectiveness of IRS-selected elements of the EPMO programs including program solutions, designs, products, technologies, data, frameworks, processes, practices, and documentation.

• Provide support to analyze and resolve issues impacting the quality of data needed for the program to achieve its stated goals and objectives.

DESIRED OUTCOME: The program will have an executable technical integration plan incorporated into each release plan to ensure that new releases are seamlessly integrated into the broader enterprise without negative impacts to overarching or filing season functionality.

Requirements of all types and levels are sufficiently defined, managed, integrated, traceable, and communicated to facilitate development and delivery of desired solutions with little to no rework.

6.4 TESTING AND TEST AUTOMATION

Release Delivery Teams shall function with testers as an integral part of the team and collaborate with IRS external test teams such as System Acceptability Testers will be early in the design and development process and integrated as much as possible. A high degree of automated testing is expected of the Release Delivery Teams. The Contractor shall support development and utilization of an automation framework that spans the use of the product.

Associated testing activities include but are not limited to:

• Develop test plan and test cases.

• Trace test cases to user stories

• Track test cases status and fix defects

• Perform full N to N integration tests with system integration dependences.

• Create synthetic data that mimic as close to live data.

• Designing, developing, testing and deploying project code

• Integration - working with other IRS organizations and contractors to support integration efforts as well as identifying best practices for facilitating integration for system engineering solutions. Support implementation and integration of engineered designs into operational systems using operational (EOps) processes and procedures.

• Testing - coordinating and performing demonstrations and conducting unit level, system, and user testing to be performed before the conclusion of each iteration.

o Documenting and reporting testing results while adhering to IRS requirements relative to product quality requirement.

o Identifying agile test results reports that are appropriate for IRS iterative delivery projects.

o Utilizing test driven development approach, as applicable, to support the incremental development of high-quality code.

• Conducting 508 Compliance activities such as designing, testing to ensure that products meet all applicable Section 508 provisions.

• Knowledge on DevSecOps pipeline o Utilize Git repositories and GitFlow strategy for developers to collaborate and deliver code rapidly.

o Manage Git branch structure, configurations, and protection to allow for concurrent development of releases, out of cycle/ad hoc releases, and Production defect fixes.

o Configure Jenkins and/or GitLab CI/CD multi-branch pipelines for all BTA services/repositories to build, test, and security scan BTA codebase upon each code commit, with automated feedback to developers on failures.

o Configure CI/CD pipelines to automate deployments to development, test and

Production environments, providing flexibility to automatically rollback if errors occur o Deploy containers to EKS clusters in the development, testing and Production environments by properly staging build/image versions and validating that environment configurations are correct to ensure reliability, functionality, and consistency.

o Develop automated pipelines to migrate artifacts and deploy code from a secure cloud environment to IEP GovCloud environment, enabling rapid integration and performance testing and Production releases o Build infrastructure-as-code scripts for provisioning Cloud resources/environments, configuring service mesh, TXP common resources, and deploying containers across all environments so that infrastructure deployments are automated and analogous o Utilize application performance monitoring (APM) and logging tools to continuously monitor development, testing and Production environments to identify potential defects and quickly mitigate o Build and maintain a secure Cloud environment that mirrors target-state architecture to support application development across teams to expedite delivery and migration to cloud infrastructure o Perform security scanning of code, dependencies, and infrastructure within each sprint/iteration to identify, log, and retest vulnerabilities using tools such as

AppScan, Nexus IQ, Guardium, Selenium, and Sysdig o Deploy code to Production using Blue/Green and Canary deployments to increase frequency of deployments, minimize downtime for new feature releases, and reduce deployment risk and Production defects

• Support Automation Capabilities o Leverage TXP automation capabilities to quickly onboard products and features into pipeline, including Git-hosted CI/CD templates consisting of application build/unit testing, SonarQube quality scanning, NexusIQ and AppScan security scanning, container builds/deployments, and automated test suite execution o Deploy images to EKS using Podman and use Kustomize to automatically configure container, which includes auto-scaling, dependencies, and targets o Utilize Git hooks and linting tools to reject code commits if code does not meet formatting, quality and/or security standards o Integrate test automation suites (e.g., Selenium, RIT, SoapUI) within CI/CD pipeline to validate applications function as expected following every code change and deployment to DEV o Implement on-demand testing environments with configurations that closely mimic Production to increase integrity of test data that can be isolated within each testing environment while also reducing need for manual testing through automated suites o Implement automated health checks to confirm successful deployment by leveraging Kubernetes and AWS tools, and enable auto rollback if errors are encountered

• Support Automated Security Scanning o Leverage automated data driven analytics (i.e., Splunk) to monitor, analyze, and correlate threats to identify security risks o Perform security scanning throughout the development lifecycle in both the a secure cloud environment as well as the IRS environment to identify and remediate security issues within the code base o Document security findings, resolutions, and artifacts automatically through

CI/CD pipeline to enable rapid delivery, expedited release timelines, and continuously update repositories with latest release artifacts o Integrate security solutions into the CI/CD pipeline for automated security scanning, vulnerability identification, and feedback mechanisms for defect resolution to reduce risks to infrastructure, code, and data o Develop additional vulnerability scans using applicable security solutions to identify, analyze, monitor, and mitigate code quality security findings, third party library o Incorporate vulnerability scans using applicable security solutions to identify, analyze, monitor, and mitigate code quality security findings, third party library vulnerabilities, and infrastructure security findings throughout the lifecycle, including in the Operations and Maintenance (O&M) environment

DESIRED OUTCOME: Ensure that the program delivery organization has the appropriate testing resources to plan for and manage the delivery of BTA products, specifically working software code at the end of each iteration.

6.5 BUSINESS ANALYSIS SUPPORT

The contractor shall provide business process analysis, business process reengineering support, and project assessments to the program.

• Develop descriptions of existing processes and planned process changes including complex process flow charts and diagrams, and presentations for each release.

• Facilitate the business transition to new capabilities for each release through identification of potential business process and resource impacts and recommendations for implementation.

• Provide supporting analyses, documentation, presentations, meetings, and recommendations as required.

• Update best practices for business process analysis, reengineering, and documentation.

• Support business process reengineering activities for each release by applying expertise in the techniques and tools and by leading and facilitating reengineering sessions, documenting the results, and analyzing and recommending potential improvements.

• Support identification and communication of business process related impacts to/from all elements of the program and provide recommendations to address them.

DESIRED OUTCOME: Business process integration points and impacts to or from the EPMO programs are captured, coordinated, and communicated to business and IT stakeholders to inform requirements, design, development, delivery, quality assurance, and transition planning efforts as needed.

6.6 REQUIREMENTS ENGINEERING SUPPORT

The contractor shall provide the program with requirements engineering support applying subject matter expertise and best practices for requirements development, analysis, management, traceability, validation, and tool integration.

• Analyze business requirements from key stakeholders.

• Elicit, develop, and document program requirements including upfront specification of all functional and non-functional requirements needed to fully support program capabilities and business objectives.

• Refine and decompose program requirements into system, project and “build-to” requirements needed to support program development and scalability, testing, delivery, and operations activities.

• Utilize various methods for capturing and communicating requirements, as appropriate, for the program needs including use of epics, user stories, use cases and traditional

“shall” statements.

• Establish, maintain, and document traceability from business needs through and between all levels and types of requirements to supporting test cases/scenarios and acceptance criteria.

• Revise, review, and update requirements documents.

• Support requirements tool integration.

• Continuously assess requirements to verify and maintain traceability and to ensure persistent alignment with evolving business needs, solution architecture, Unified Work

Request (UWR) and/or change requests and other dependencies.

DESIRED OUTCOME: A requirements engineering process that integrates with IRS enterprise processes and tools, provides visibility into all program and project requirements, maintains, and illustrates requirements traceability from business benefits.

6.7 ENGINEERING AND ARCHITECTURE SUPPORT

The contractor shall provide support on technical expertise to ensure that the Solution

Architecture reflects the strategic directions of the IRS.

• Provide system, technology, program and architecture and engineering subject matter expertise.

• Conduct a comprehensive review of program processes and tools for accuracy and conformity with architecture definition.

• Conduct focused technical analyses in support of the program, releases, and projects including architecture and engineering tasks.

• Conduct platform, data, performance and software engineering analyses and feasibility studies.

• Communicate results of analyses and studies to appropriate IRS stakeholders.

• Support the establishment of technical prototypes, proofs-of-concept and limited operational pilots; as appropriate, to facilitate early investigation and assessment of candidate technologies, product, and solutions to meet emerging program needs.

• Support the assessment of; and next steps determination for, program prototypes, proofs-of-concept and pilots.

• Support the development, documentation, and evaluation of logical and physical designs.

• Facilitate and participate in detailed logical and physical design reviews at the project and release levels.

• Ensure that the IRS architecture repositories adhere to solution architecture specifications and descriptions.

• Facilitate knowledge transfer to requirements, design, and application development teams.

• Deliver Vision Scope Architecture artifacts.

DESIRED OUTCOME: The program solution architecture, roadmap and infrastructure strategy adhere to the IRS enterprise architecture and target state and accurately reflect the planned goal and approach, including expected components and services and are accurately and completely implemented in architecture tools in use at the IRS.

7 OPERATION AND MAINTENANCE PRODUCTION SUPPORT

The contractor shall be responsible for consulting with IRS to create and implement a Transition

Management Plan for continuation of maintenance and operation support. At the conclusion of the transition, the IRS shall have a clear understanding of how the Contractor will effectively maintain the operation and maintenance of the project with no interruption or degradation of service.

Contractor to provide maintenance and operation support per Transition Management Plan. The transition plan shall include operating model, timeline, process and technical documentations, training materials and sessions, reference guide, etc.

Contractor shall provide support for the monitoring of the current production products/features that are in an operations and maintenance status.

The contractor will provide support for BTA production environment that aligns with the

Enterprise Incident Management standards and guidelines. The contractor must perform

24x7x365 operation and maintenance production system monitoring and incident management support services and routine system operations, excluding identified holidays in section HOURS

OF OPERATION. When incidents accrue triage the incident and restore Web Apps system health by bringing the incident to resolution and must respond to a call within 30 minutes.

Support services include support in the following key areas.

Contractor team should consist of 25% of members having IRS and OLA institutional knowledge. Contractors should be on IRS facility collaboration space Tuesday to Thursday when possible.

7.1 OPERATION & MAINTENANCE SUPPORT

The contractor will be required to produce high quality code based on Web Apps Delivery model and are responsible for any technical debt that is incurred because of their development activities. Technical debt may be incurred because of design and development decisions made by the team due to competing priorities that may potentially increase the complexity of the code base, necessitating refactoring later. Incurring technical debt may not be avoidable; however, it must be addressed and “paid down” in future development activities. Team members are required to develop user stories to be prioritized in the backlog to address technical debt.

Delivery is expected to follow the Web Applications Agile Delivery and O&M process and as applicable, Agile, or iterative development industry best practices, to include version control, automated builds, automated testing, and continuous integration. Release Delivery Teams shall

“handoff” to the deployment team as a package makes its way through the deployment process.

Release Delivery Teams will be responsible for providing continuous production support.

To accomplish this task, the contractor shall be responsible for providing the team members to contribute full suite of development, testing (to include security and 508), integration and delivery tasks using Agile/iterative methodologies, including, but not limited to:

• Participating in capacity planning for new feature development, planning, elaboration, solution design, developing code and other artifacts against the user stories and security requirements documented in the task or as assigned by the government.

• Software code testing, including creating test cases and automated test scripts to support test automation activities; sharing test scripts as needed; working to increase the coverage, quality, and speed of existing tests. Unless stated differently, testing shall be in accordance with the most current version of the Web Applications Testing Support

Implementation Plan.

• Performing integration and delivery activities to ensure the automatic build and deployment process works effectively across all environments.

Managing release chute, deployments, production maintenance, production monitoring, incident management, root cause analysis, and development of user stories to resolve issues.

7.1.1 TECHNICAL WRITING

All contractors supporting O&M are required to have technical writing sufficient to accomplish their Feature teams required documentation.

• Assist with Delivery Support Production environment status reporting

• Document and update playbook/implementation plan to support release

• Attends technical meetings and independently captures updates to project documentation artifacts such as Computer Operator Handbook (COH), Knowledge Articles

• Dedicated to the project during the development, deployment periods

• Assist with Deployment Site Readiness Test (DSRT) and Delivery validation decks and bottom line upfront (BLUF) statements for AD executive leadership

Summary of O&M Team Members Technical Architect (Full Stack Developer) CFTE 2

Program Analyst (Prod Monitoring Analyst) CFTE 1

Delivery Manager (Dev Ops/Configuration Engineer) CFTE 1

Test Automation Architect (Performance Tester) CFTE 1

8 Surge Support (Optional)

8.1 Surge Support

Surge Support is OPTIONAL and is not guaranteed. If the Government determines that an increased quantity of support is required for the task and subtasks areas defined in the PWS, the

Government will exercise the option and define the work to be performed.

9 SKILL REQUIREMENTS

The IRS has chosen a strategy for application development that will combine IRS team members with contractor staff in all components of its Agile product development process and system maintenance. As a result, the need for team members well-versed in Agile product development and program management are needed to participate in the planning, creation, delivery, and support of Digital support service products is necessary for the success of the Web Apps

Program.

The BTA Program Management Office (PMO) is highly interested in Agile thought leadership, development methodologies, and proven delivery track records. Contractors must ensure that personnel quoted have enough knowledge, skills, and experience identified to accomplish designated tasks in below Task Areas. The contractor shall provide technical methods, techniques, and concepts that are innovative, practical, cost-effective, and conducive to

Agile/iterative application development, 508 Compliance and security testing. The contractor shall develop applications based on user stories that are evolving and emerge as the business climate shifts. It is expected that all code developed by the teams will be for new functionality or critical changes to existing functionality as identified and prioritized by the government product owners.

• Java Development: JDK1.8, MDC, Filters, Loggers, Concurrence, Security, JPA, JUnit, Archetype development, Selenium, AppScan, REST Service

• Spring Framework: MVC, Boot, WebFlux, Test, Security

• Persistence: Oracle, SQL, MongoDB

• Client Development: React, JavaScript, CSS, JAWS, Dragon, Zoom Text

• DevOps: Maven, Jenkins, SonarQube, Nexus, Grunt, NPM, IBM RTC

• Other Skills: Splunk, IBM Collaborative Lifecycle Management (CLM), Excel, PowerPoint

• CLM Subject Matter Experts (SME) with knowledge of Agile, development methodologies, and proven delivery track records developing filters and reports out of

CLM for statuses, system and product performance, briefings, and tracking.

• Extensive knowledge and expertise in the following tools necessary to support this task effort: Rational Collaboration Lifecycle Management (CLM), Microsoft Excel, and

Microsoft PowerPoint

The following skills and tools experience are necessary to fulfill the requirements of this TO associated with direct testing support:

• Knowledge of IRS’ current Tax Processing System

• Knowledge and experience with IRS Tier I and II systems

• Experience testing software products in an Agile development environment

• Knowledge in performance testing methodologies and experience conducting performance testing

• Knowledge of Angular Java Script

• Knowledge and experience with test tools such as (but not limited to) Micro Focus

Performance Center and Micro Focus LoadRunner, Parasoft LoadTest, IBM Rational

Performance Tester, BrowserStack, Selenium, Rational Functional Tester (RFT), Rational Integration Tester (RIT), Rational Team Concert (RTC), Rational Service

Tester, SoapUI, SOATest, and other similar tools

• Well-developed project management skills

• Experience and knowledge of the software development lifecycle and specifically the

IRS Agile Enterprise Lifecycle (ELC)

• Proficient in IBM Collaborative Lifecycle Management (CLM), IBM Rational Quality

Manager (RQM), and MS Office Products

• Knowledge of the EST Systemic Processing (SP) pipeline for synthetic data used for test

• Experience working on Agile teams and using modern, integration testing tools, techniques, and methods for the creation and deployment of system interfaces. Is comfortable working in an agile and lean environment to routinely test and deploy changes. Experience with (but not limited to):

o Testing Middleware, Data services and Interface Gateway including RESTFul

API testing o Spring Framework, MVC, Boot, WebFlux, Systems Security, TCP/IP o SOAP UI, JMeter, Junit, Jenkins, SonarQube, Nexus, Grunt, NPM, IBM RTC, Slunk, IBM CLM

The following skills and tools experience are necessary to fulfill the requirements of this TO associated with 508 testing support:

• High-performing individual should conduct section 508 testing via manual reviews, automated test tools and assistive technologies that conform to IRS standards.

• Contract personnel will pool with mostly IRS staffed development team and will operate within the Web Apps Delivery Model.

• The individual will also collaborate with Compart to ensure digital notices are 508 compliant. They should have experience with UX design regarding 508 section and usability.

• Should have experience with preparing test plans and test case scenarios associated with accessibility standards. Communicate defects and potential workarounds to developers and other team members not familiar with section 508 requirements.

• Individual with knowledge on using CLM tool and creating user stories. The individuals should help in creating Acceptance Criteria for user stories and ensure testing is done accordingly. Work with scrum master and development team in ensuring the CLM tool is updated with correct information and test cases.

• Create backlogs for 508 testing scenarios and provide guidance as needed for 508 testing

Acceptance criteria will specify expected functionality for a user story, as well as any non-functional requirements that must be met in story development. The IRS Product Owners supported by Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) and Business Analysts will determine whether acceptance criteria have been satisfied.

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