BMF MOD- SME support Request For Information (RFI) Notice document 5.22.2024.docx

Request For Information (RFI) Notice for Business Master File Modernization (BMF MOD) Program – Business Requirements and SME Support

1. Introduction

THIS IS A REQUEST FOR INFORMATION (RFI) FOR MARKET RESEARCH ONLY – NO

AWARD WILL BE MADE FROM THIS NOTICE. This is being released for informational purposes to assist the IRS and is subject to change.

This Notice is published to gain knowledge of potential vendors capable of providing services for the Draft Performance Work Statement (PWS) titled “PWS_BMF Mod Legacy SME Support” (Draft PWS) dated 05/17/2024.

The information obtained through this market research will assist the IRS in determining the appropriate acquisition procedures for obtaining the BMF Modernization services described in the attached Draft PWS. This market research will help IRS plan their acquisition strategy and aid in its determination as to whether it is appropriate to set-aside this work for a large business or small businesses or for a specific socio-economic category of small businesses such as 8(a), small disadvantaged, women-owned, veteran-owned, service-disabled-veteran-owned, or HUBZone small business.

Contractors must be registered in the System for Award Management (SAM) database located at https://www.sam.gov/SAM/ prior to award, during performance, and through final payment of any contract resulting from this Notice. Contractors may obtain information on SAM registration by visiting https://www.acquisition.gov.

The Draft PWS is tentatively planned as a Task Order (T) award against the General Services Administration (GSA), Multiple Award Schedule (MAS) Information Technology. Responses are sought from small and large businesses who can provide the services described in the Draft PWS.

The IRS does not anticipate conducting one-on-one meetings with interested industry partners.

Potential vendors with the skills and capabilities necessary to perform the various requirements described in the attached Draft PWS are invited to provide a written response to this Notice per the requirements listed below.

2. Purpose and Objectives

The IRS seeks to identify potential vendors with the skills and technical capabilities necessary to perform the requirements outlined in the attached Draft PWS (see Attachment 1).

The IRS is looking to identify:

· Small Businesses (e.g., 8(a), service-disabled veteran owned small business, HUBZone small business, small, disadvantaged business, veteran-owned small business, and woman-owned small business) that can perform the requirements outlined in the Draft PWS.

· Large Business that can perform the requirements outlined in the Draft PWS, including large businesses that are able to incorporate a small business participation plan.

3. Scope and Background

The IRS established the Business Master File Modernization (BMF MOD) Program to achieve the modernization of business taxpayer accounting and implementation of modernized data distribution platform. The BMF Mod solution concept aligns with the IRS Modernized Tax Account Management target state architecture and will enable the Agency to accelerate the delivery of high-value features to business taxpayers by using reusable components and common platform services. BMF Mod will leverage a full lifecycle solution. Contractors shall be responsible for architecture, design, development, testing, security, and integration of the modern target-state solution within the scope of IRS outcomes and guardrails. Through this program, the IRS will implement the solution of a single integrated environment for managing business taxpayer accounts that will:

· Implement a state-of-the-art solution and services to enable the IRS BMF to provide digital services to the taxpayer and enable more timely taxpayer compliance.

· Improve security and privacy of taxpayer information by eliminating identified weaknesses.

· Provide more timely and accurate responses to taxpayer inquiries and faster resolution by establishing an authoritative data source with daily processing capability.

· Increase the integrity and accuracy of taxpayer accounts which are the cornerstones of the US Financial System.

· Improve the agility and flexibility of the IRS to respond to new legislative mandates and taxpayer expectation.

The BMF Mod Program is modernizing core business taxpayer accounting capabilities and establishing the BMF database as the modernized authoritative datastore for business taxpayer account data in a scalable Big-Data, FedRAMP high, Cloud platform. BMF Modernization will use common services to make BMF data more accessible, establish the analytical datastore, and enable self-service reporting. Downstream consumers and users will modify downstream systems to access modernized data formats and transition off BMF legacy applications and file formats. The BMF Mod program will modernize data distribution mechanisms to enable faster and easier data consumption by downstream consumers and users. The BMF database shall be developed as a centralized data hub to facilitate easier access to business account data, allowing self-service reporting and analytical tools.

The BMF Mod Program serves as the Prime Integrator, driving program delivery and integration efforts in a consistent yet flexible manner. The BMF Mod Program has determined the target- state objectives and solution to address the pressing issues faced by the IRS regarding tax processing and has updated the IRS capabilities to industry-level. With contractor support being provided to the BMF Mod Program under this PWS, the IRS will implement the full-scale solution and single integrated environment for managing business taxpayer accounts that will:

· Modernize and retire legacy BMF applications, data files and data bases.

· Replace the BMF Account Data Structures with a modern, secure, future-proof technology foundation that can rapidly scale.

· Conduct business tax processing in a FedRamp high cloud-based, data centric solution.

· Produce the minimal mandatory outputs necessary to close the accounting cycle.

· Provide downstream consumers with a modern and secure method to access taxpayer data.

· Develop a repository that stores multiple representations of business taxpayer data to enable improved analytics.

· Provide downstream consumers with the means to conduct self-service reporting and analytics.

· Create reusable common services that perform account management functions.

· Allow users to leverage new data formats and services.

The BMF Mod Program is being implemented through a series of programs, releases, and projects, which will business employ the development methodology (e.g., agile, iterative or waterfall) determined to best meet the project, release, and program needs.

4. Capabilities and Experience

Responses to this Notice shall demonstrate the respondent’s capability to perform the services outlined in the Daft PWS. Potential small and large businesses demonstrate their knowledge, expertise, and experience with the PWS requirements in all the numbered points below, including:

A. General

1. What discriminators, i.e., evaluation criteria, would your company recommend the Government use to evaluate a proposal based on the requirements outlined in the Draft PWS?

2. What should be included in the Quality Assurance Surveillance Plan (QASP) for the Government to monitor the quality of worked performed?

3. What benefits and/or drawbacks does your company see to releasing one task order or multiple task orders to meet the requirements in the Draft PWS? How would your company suggest the requirement be divided if more than one task order should be issued, and why?

4. Outline any other considerations for development of an acquisition strategy for the requirement outlined in the Draft PWS. What additional information would you desire to accurately propose pricing, staffing and approaches to meet the requirements of the Draft PWS?

5. Is there potential work within the PWS that should not be combined in order to create Organizational Conflict of Interest (OCI) issues?

B. Technical

1. Describe your Program Management processes for modernizing large legacy applications using an Agile methodology.

2. Describe your software development and integrations processes for modernization. (These legacy applications have been written IBM Assembler Language (ALC) and deployed in production on IBM mainframe for 50+ years.)

3. Describe your overall enterprise Agile approach and the timeframe for implementing your full-scale Agile processes.

a. How would you on-board the needed Subject Matter of Expert (SME) staff quickly support the program needs (e.g., the specialists with ALC, DB2, Java on mainframe)?

b. Describe your experience in Enterprise and Solutions Architecture team, design, development, test, deployment, and operations and maintenance (O&M) using Dev Sec Ops and Agile practices in a Cloud environment. Describe your process for code changes (development, unit testing, and deployment) needed for responding to high priority, planned/unplanned, quick turn-around legislative changes following Agile methodology and Software Development Lifecycle. Please reference the following matrix in your response:

BMF Mod Support Areas Matrix

BMF Mod Support Role

Legacy Masterfile Knowledge

Legacy ALC SME support

Logic Harvesting

Masterfile Requirements Development

Architecture

Design

Solutions Engineering

Code Conversion (ALC to JAVA or alternate)

Development

Test

a. Code acceptance testing

b. Load and performance testing

c. User acceptance testing

d. Integration testing

e. IRS 508 compliance testing

Security Services

a. Security Testing

b. Penetration Testing

c. Security Architecture and Design

d. Security Engineering Services

e. Security Assessment and security documentation

Deployment

Hosting and/or Storage

Operations and Maintenance (to include legislative change updates)

Documentation Development and Maintenance

User and Operations Training Materials Development and Class sessions

Program Management Support

Organizational Change Support

4. Have you supported IRS legacy systems modernization with similar scope and complexity? If so, provide information that demonstrates your experience with supporting IRS systems?

5. Describe the necessary steps you would take to transition the current BMF O&M activities (e.g., legislative changes).What information would you require and what timeframe would you expect transition activities to occur? What is your project and development transition strategy?

6. Provide examples of previous projects where you designed and built resilient, high-performance transaction processing systems (e.g., in Java language) based on relational databases on mainframe) and modern reporting applications using Big Data technologies in Cloud.

7. Provide examples of previous projects using Commercial Off-The Shelf (COTS) products to modernize legacy applications.

a. What positions would your company recommend be key personnel? What types of experience and certifications/qualifications should be considered for BMF Key Personnel? Does your company employ said personnel or would you have to team to meet the technical requirements?

b. For the business unit of your company that may bid on this work, how many personnel possess relevant experience and/or relevant certifications in the following areas and could provide services for the requirements outlined in the draft PWS:

· Agile Development (e.g., Professional Scrum Master (PSM), Professional Scrum Developer (PSD), etc.)

· Project Management (e.g., Project Management Professional (PMP), Project Management Institute-Agile Certified Practitioner (PMI-ACP), etc.)

· Information Security (e.g., Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP), Certified Information Security Manager (CISM) etc.)

· Cloud Services (e.g., Solutions Architect, Developer, etc.)

· Enterprise Architecture (e.g., Certified Enterprise Architect (CEA), The Open Group Architecture Framework (TOGAF), etc.)

8. Describe your company's best practices and solutions that could enable BMF Mod.

9. Describe contract types (e.g., firm-fixed-price, time-and-materials, cost reimbursement, etc.) that your company has experience with in providing Agile software development services. Identify contract types your firm feels worked well, and why. Also, please identify contract types that are not useful and why they are not effective.

Teaming Arrangements: Responses based upon anticipated teaming arrangements and Joint Ventures are acceptable. The capability of each team member (prime contractor and subcontractors) shall be demonstrated relative to the anticipated functions/roles to be performed by each. All teaming arrangements shall also include the above-cited information and certifications for each entity on the proposed team. Specifically, the capability statement must address how much effort would be performed by any proposed team member. Note that any resulting small business set-aside would require that at least 50% of the cost of contract performance for personnel be expended for employees of the concern (see FAR 52.219-14, Limitations on Subcontracting).

RESPONSES TO THIS NOTICE SHALL BE NO MORE THAN 10 PAGES: The following information shall be included in Request For Information (RFI) responses:

1. Company Name and Unique Entity Identifier Number, CAGE

2. Company Address

3. Name, phone number and email address of company representative

4. Type of company under North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) 541512 - Computer Systems Design Services. Size Standard $30.0 Million (i.e., small business, 8(a), woman-owned, veteran-owned, etc.) as validated via the System for Award Management (SAM). Additional information on NAICS codes can be found at www.sba.gov.

5. Company socio-economic standing(s); i.e., large business, small business, veteran-owned small business, service-disabled veteran-owned small business, HUB Zone small business, small-disadvantaged business, or women-owned small business.

6. Best in Class (BIC) - Relevant BIC Government Wide Acquisition Contract (GWAC) or FSS Schedule Contract held by your company (e.g., 8(a) STARS II, Alliant 2, VETS, NITAAC).

7. Capability statement and/or letter of interest

8. Business Certifications (e.g., CMMI, ISO)

9. Relevant experience and past performance

10. Point of Contact, phone number and email addresses of at least two businesses who can verify the demonstrated capabilities identified in the responses.

5. Submission Requirements:

All capability statements shall be submitted via email to the point of contact listed below. The title of the email shall read “Response to IRS BMF Modernization” Responses shall be limited to 10 single-sided pages, not including the required business information and cover page. Pages should be single-spaced, minimum 11-point Times New Roman font with a minimum of one- inch margins on all sides. Responses shall not contain any brochures, advertising or any other type of extraneous, graphic literature or documents that have not been requested and are not relevant or essential in demonstrating the company’s ability to provide the required services. Vendors may provide links to relevant websites, as appropriate.

The deadline for responses to this RFI is 06/11/2024 at 5:00 PM EST. Responses should be sent electronically to both Points of Contact:

Primary Point of Contact and Contact Information:

Name: Aaron Hill Title: Procurement Analyst Email: Aaron.C.Hill@irs.gov Phone number: 757-375-3297

Secondary Point of Contact and Contact Information:

Name: Ashley T. Shell Title: EDOS Project Manager Email: Ashley.T.Shell@irs.gov Phone: 240-613-8331

IRS will not entertain questions regarding this market research.

Disclaimer and Important Notes:

This Notice is for information and planning purposes only and does not constitute a solicitation for bids, quotes, or proposals. This Notice does not obligate the Government to solicit for this requirement or award and does not obligate the Government to reimburse interested parties for any cost incurred to prepare or provide a response to this source sought Notice.

The Government reserves the right to use information provided by respondents for any purpose deemed necessary and legally appropriate. Any organization responding to this Notice should ensure that its response is complete and sufficiently detailed to allow the Government to determine the organization’s qualifications to perform the work. Respondents are advised that the Government is under no obligation to acknowledge receipt of the information received or provide feedback to respondents with respect to any information submitted. No reimbursement will be made for any costs associated with providing information in response to this Notice. Respondents will not be notified of the results of this evaluation.

** THE GOVERNMENT WILL NOT RESPOND TO PHONE CALLS. **