5000193595 Notice of Intent.pdf

Notice of Intent 5000193595

Versaterm Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS)

The Department of Internal Revenue Service (IRS) intends to make a Sole Source award to Versaterm Public Safety US Inc for the purchase of Versaterm Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS).

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Criminal Investigation (CI) Center for Science and Design (CSD) requires a 12-month maintenance renewal with four option periods of its Versaterm Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS). CSD utilizes LIMS to create cases, maintain chain of custody by tracking evidence as it is routed through the laboratory, generate reports, and gather information needed to demonstrate compliance with accreditation requirements. The LIMS is the laboratory’s complete case management system.

The Versaterm LIMS has the ability to successfully collect metrics that could help improve work flow, such as the volume of evidence processed by the laboratory, the number of NGI AFIS (i.e. the FBI’s national fingerprint database) hits resulting in investigative leads, the types of cases worked (e.g. ID Theft cases), and the amount of laboratory resources that are used to complete these cases.

IRS CI CSD have a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) and United States Secret Service Forensic services Division. Both labs support each other in the case work. It is crucial for IRS CI CSD to align the results with Unites States Secret Service (USSS) so there are no discrepancies in the case work and further cooperations of the agencies. Additionally IRS-CI collaborates closely with Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) so there are no discrepancies between any of our caseloads.

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Criminal Investigation (CI) Center for Science and Design requires a 12-month maintenance renewals of its Versaterm Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS) not only to align case reporting with USSS but over the last seven (7) years (two years and 5 years under contract) IRS CI obtained customized options from LIMS manufacturers that are only suited to our laboratory. We cannot lose any of those because our services to the agents/submitters, integrity and security will be compromised in huge extend.

Versaterm LIMS product presents unique qualifications with the following things:

I. Data Organization & Accessibility: LIMS organizes case and evidence-related data through an intuitive graphical user interface, making accessing relevant data swift and efficient. LIMS also maintain and display links or relationships among the data across multiple cases. It helps us to getter information faster to prepare for the courts, pretrials or to work closely with the submitter.

II. Chain of Custody Tracking: The risk of errors, disputes, or even tampering is always looming, but the LIMS tracking system allows us to put our Personal Identity Verification cards during that process to record the correct person during the process of chain of custody. LIMS uses a robust “z-order” chain of custody to verify not only where the evidence items are going, but that they are also confirmed to have come from the location where they are currently. This logging not only simplifies the chain of custody process but also drastically reduces the risk of errors, disputes, and potential misplacement.

III. Integration of Data Sources: In a multi-disciplinary environment (Latent fingerprints, Questioned Documents, ink Chemistry, Trial and Design Services, Audio and Video analysis, Multimedia Services) where evidence comes from various sources such as forensic analysis, digital data, and physical samples are well integrated in one system.

IV. Collaboration & Communication: Effective communication and data sharing are vital in the investigative world. Timely sharing of critical information among relevant personnel and agencies (USSS and Homeland Security Investigations) is essential to drive efficient collaboration. It is critical for IRS CSD to align their results with USSS and HSI by leveraging the same LIMS product.

V. Integrity, compatibility and security of the system: IRS CI Center for Science and Design has been using the LIMS by Versaterm (formerly known as JusticeTrax) for the last seven (7) years. Bringing other system to the lab than the Versaterm will compromise integrity, compatibility of current established laboratory’s procedures, software and equipment, slow down the case intake, and it might compromise the security of the evidence received and processed.

VI. Technical services: The Contractor, without additional charge to the Government, provide a hot line technical support number for the purpose of providing user assistance.

VII. Software maintenance service: shall Include the following: Software maintenance Includes toll-free technical support and all patches, bug fixes, upgrades, and full revisions of the software. Additionally, access is granted to all on-line support features.

VIII. Limitations of other vendors on the market: There is no other LIMS system comparable to the one offered by Versaterm. Between 2000 to present, our laboratory attend multiple annual conferences in our field such as American Academy of Forensic Sciences (AAFS), American Society of Questioned Documents Examiners (ASQDE), or International Association for Identification (IAI) and we did not finding any comparable vendor that offers LIMS like the one from Versaterm. There was not even one vendor present at those meeting except Versaterm. There are products outside of our scope of work on the market, but they are NOT as specific to our needs as LIMS by Versaterm. One of those products is the LIMS offered by ThermoFisher that offers management of a variety of complicated data types for DNA, ballistics, and more but those are more biological testing and batallistic which our lab is not conducting.

The period of performance is for base year and four (4) option periods

Base Year: 9/25/2024-9/24/2025 Option Year 1: 9/25/2025-9/24/2026 Option Year 2: 9/25/2026-9/24/2027 Option Year 3: 9/25/2027-9/24/2028 Option Year 4: 9/25/2028-9/24/2029

This is not a Request for Quote (RFQ), but a Notice of Intent. No RFQ will be issued. Interested parties may, however, request further information (no later than 3:00 PM eastern time, September 18, 2024 by email to Contracting Specialist, Leatrice Person at leatrice.f.person@irs.gov .

mailto:leatrice.f.person@irs.gov