DRAFT PWS_ Platform Site Reliability Eng Setup Spt 5000204829.docx

Platform Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Setup and Support Performance Work Statement (PWS) Technology Strategy Management (TSM) Enterprise Services (ES) Internal Revenue Service (IRS) November 2024

RFP for Enterprise Architecture Strategy and Governance - Technology Reference Model (TRM) & Technology Strategy Implementation Services

INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUND

Technology Strategy Management (TSM) is a division in the Enterprise Services (ES) organization of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Enterprise Services (ES) is responsible for strengthening technology infrastructure across the enterprise. The ES team accomplishes this by defining the current and target Enterprise Architectures and developing a transition strategy to move the agency towards the target environment. ES is focused on technology strategy management, architecture, solution engineering and system testing. ES sets enterprise technology direction by translating business priorities into an effective enterprise technical framework, setting architecture guidance, and establishing technology standards. The ES organization actively works with IRS business units and IT suppliers to collaboratively define and institutionalize the enterprise level process and standards needed to successfully deliver IT solutions and to comply with cross-cutting internal and external IT mandates and requests.

Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Enterprise Services (ES)–Technology Strategy Management (TSM) plays a unique, differentiated role in IRS Information Technology (IT) and promotes integration management, which helps translate strategies to the execution level by driving IT enterprise-wide platform-based solutions across the IRS. TSM oversees major low-code/no-code platforms such as Salesforce, Pega Systems, and Service Now that are widely used across the IRS technology landscape to automate and modernize several business operations across IRS domains, including Customer Service, Internal Management, Case Management, and Compliance.

Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) has moved center stage as organizations look to harness cloud automation to accelerate digital transformation. First and foremost, SRE is about innovation, education, and enablement. It drives greater alignment between development teams and supports the collective effort to define the best practices that will enable teams across disciplines to automate processes at scale meeting the organization’s business, security, quality, and performance goals. Site Reliability Engineering and Platform Engineering are two functions that are critical in optimizing organizations for building cloud-native applications. The SRE delivers infrastructure for highly reliable applications, while platform engineering delivers infrastructure for rapid application development. Jointly they create and evolve systems to automatically run applications, reliably.

The IRS desires to hire contractors to perform Platform Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Setup and Support for automating development processes, configuring service-level objectives (SLOs), creating fixes and workarounds to avoid overrun error budgets, analyzing vulnerabilities, or building self-healing and observability into applications and infrastructure. The desired support will contribute to refining IRS strategizing capacity through equipping personnel with the tools, data, and capabilities they need to drive modern development and innovation tackling complexities resulting from the new growth of technologies, languages, platforms, and tools in cloud-native delivery.

1.1 Key Federal Drivers Influencing Platform Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Setup and Support

IRS IRA Strategic Operating Plan, Objective 4

Deliver cutting edge technology, data, and analytics to operate more effectively. Initiative 4.2: Accelerate technology delivery: The IRS will deliver faster and better results by accelerating design, development, and delivery of user centered technology by shifting to a “product and platform” operating model that incorporates business and technology perspectives

Enterprise Architecture Roadmap (March 2024 Release)

IRS will rearchitect and replace aging applications with modern business solutions built on API/Microservices, even-driven architecture (EDA), enterprise web-portals, and cloud-based delivery platforms that include low/no code, PaaS, and SaaS. New-cloud native applications and microservices will be deployed to container platforms rather than to virtual machines, enabling greater workload probability and scalability across on-prem and cloud providers

Strategy4.2.2: Enhance operational agility by adopting advanced technologies and leveraging common platforms across business

Figure1-2 Policy and Guidance Drivers

1.2 Platform Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Setup and Support Program Amidst the complexity of cloud-native development, in a world where the reliability, security, and resiliency of digital services is paramount for business success rises the needed for Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) to boost IRS digitization journey helping to pull further from manual, ad hoc scripts to adopt a platform-based solution with state-of-the-art automation and everything-as-code capabilities that support the full lifecycle from configuration and testing to observability and remediation.

The platform enables teams to concentrate on solving real business problems by abstracting organizational complexities and effort. Organizations build an internal development platform or development control layer to reduce complexity and enabling self-service. While most developer platforms and control layers are built with these goals at their core, striking the right balance can prove challenging. The Contractor’s role is to apply software engineering principles to improve reliability constantly examining the entire software development lifecycle from source to production. From this introspective process, a workflow is built that enables application developers to rapidly code and ship software. A basic workflow typically includes a source control system connected with a continuous integration system, along with a way to deploy artifacts into production.

Platform Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Setup and Support promotes self-service observability, automation, self-healing, and vulnerability management critical in driving reliability across the development lifecycle and allowing the teams to build feedback loops into their applications quickly. Platform Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Setup and Support incorporates aspects of software engineering and applies them to infrastructure and operations problems to create ultra scalable and highly reliable distributed software systems driving close alignment between platform output and business value maximizing reliability, resiliency, security, performance, and ultimately, business outcomes. In this way, Platform Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Setup and Support goes beyond basic automation to smart orchestration of customer experience and business outcomes empowering development teams to drive transformation fast through self-healing cloud applications that quickly scale with business needs and are reliable and secure by default.

1.3 Technology Strategy Management Office

Technology Strategy Management provides executive leadership in shaping and implementing the overall IT agency strategy while identifying high-return technological investments for potential use within IRS. TSM organization plays a unique, differentiated role in IT and promote integration management as a function that helps translate strategies to the execution level. The Technology Strategy Management (TSM) PMO operates as a “prime integrator” of IT delivery partners in the organization across the enterprise. TSM is comprised of 5 groups and 3 Sub-groups: Enterprise Infrastructure Currency (EIC), Infrastructure Platform Strategy and Services (IPSS), Large Program Implementation Services (LPIS), Managed Technology Shared Services (MTSS) and Common Services & Integration (CS&I).

Platform Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Setup and Support program is a high visibility program that is directed by IRS IT-CIO, IT-ES-Associate Chief Information Officer (ACIO) and IT-ES-TSM Director. This requirement PMO reports daily to the ES-TSM Director, weekly to the ES-ACIO and monthly to the IRS-CIO on the progress of the program. The program strategy needs to be agile to support the rapid needs of program deliveries.

1. Executive Board The Enterprise Services Governance Board (ESGB) will be chartered to govern and approve this requirement milestone exits and approving the Integrated Master Schedule (IMS) to baseline IMS.

2.0 OBJECTIVES

Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) is a discipline and a role that incorporates aspects of software engineering and applies them to infrastructure and operations problems to create ultra scalable and highly reliable distributed software systems. Moreover, SRE is a cultural change, which is ultimately about operating software systems better.

The IRS aims from hiring contractors for Platform Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Setup and Support to achieve the following objectives:

1) Reducing Mean-Time-To-repair (MTTR) to improve the reliability of production systems.

This underscores the need to work with DevOps teams, developers, and architects to ensure software not only meets a business need but is resilient and automatable by default. This will enable teams to easily integrate new automation capabilities with existing tools and workflows, reducing manual effort and improving engineering practices.

2) Building and Maintaining Automation Code for DevOps workflows to ensure software not only meets a business need but is resilient and automatable by default. One best practice is implementing continuous release validation where code quality is automatically and continuously evaluated against key Service-Level Objectives (SLOs) as it moves through the delivery pipeline to prevent violations. This stops bad code in its tracks and allows developers to fix issues before it reaches production reducing the need for manual intervention and remediation effort.

3) Ensuring security vulnerabilities are detected and eliminated quickly and strengthening system reliability for spikes.

Security is a core pillar of reliability. DevSecOps approaches are used to ensure systems are restored quickly following the discovery of a vulnerability especially as organizations continue using third-party code libraries for cloud-native application development that can contain significant security risks, and SRE teams have a key role in ensuring those flaws are identified and eliminated quickly to protect the organization.

4) Designing experiments and running tests to reduce risk of production failure or scale user load.

Encouraging a culture of experimentation that promotes SRE strategic value for the business. Streamlining tasks that involve intensive manual effort.

5) Influencing architectural design decisions to ensure reliability and scale A key part of SRE culture is to treat every failure as a failure in the reliability system. Rigorous post-mortems are critical to identifying the root cause of the failure, and corrective actions are introduced into the automatic system to continue to improve reliability.

6) Instrumenting applications to make them observable The importance of observability platforms that offer detailed insight into real-user experiences to optimize critical user journeys. Platform Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Setup and Support can see beyond back-end performance monitoring data and understand what influences users’ behavior to drive business success. Similarly, it can help them to identify and understand exactly what is draining an error budget and the rate at which it is doing so, as well as qualifying the overall impact those issues could have on a service.

Platform Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Setup and Support uses DevOps Research and Assessment (DORA) metrics which have emerged as an industry standard for identifying where improvements are needed in software development and delivery. These include but not limited to:

1) Deployment Frequency: How often an organization successfully releases to production.

2) Lead Time for Changes: The amount of time it takes a commit to get into production.

3) Change Failure Rates: The percentage of deployments causing a failure in production

4) Time to Restore Service: How long it takes an organization to recover from a failure in production.

5) Service-Level Objectives (SLOs): SREs define service level objectives and build systems to help services achieve these objectives. These systems evolve into a platform and workflow that encompass monitoring, incident management, eliminating single points of failure, failure mitigation, and more. There are Four popular SLOs that organizations can adopt to get started:

· Availability: Whether the service is available to users

· User Satisfaction (Apdex): The satisfaction level, based on the performance of the service.

· Error Rate: The ratio of failed requests to total requests.

· Crash Rate: The crash rate across all supported devices.

Figure 1-3 is DevOps Institute Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Foundation Blueprint.

The period of performance for this requirement shall be for one base year only from date of award.

The IRS enterprise application systems reside on-premises and the cloud. On-premises applications are required to move to the cloud in the future.

3.0 SCOPE OF WORK AND DECSRIPTION OF TASKS

The Contractor shall support the development and implementation of Platform Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Setup and Support to improve the reliability and stability of running systems by monitoring and troubleshooting issues in production environments, while building and maintaining the underlying infrastructure and tools to build and deploy applications, prioritizing developer experience and streamlined workflows.

Although the Contractor shall coordinate with IRS employees and other vendor human resources on the following six tasks, they should demonstrate the willingness, flexibility and expertise to carryout additional tasks as needed like: adding more dashboards, fixing existing dashboards, unknown security, multifactor authentication, single sign-on issues, unknown connection issues, and changes in new regulations that require changes to the system's configuration, etc. The IRS Management Team will prioritize these tasks for the Contractor.

Program Management Support: Program Management is a subset of Portfolio Management that is aligned to business goals. Therefore, all Contractor effort should align to higher level business goals (i.e., support Portfolio Management objectives). Program Management is aligned to strategic objectives with a focus on multiple projects, resources, and capacity. The Contractor shall provide necessary program management and administrative support to carry out the objectives of the contract successfully, provide periodic executive briefings, meeting minutes, quad charts, work requests, report the progress on key metrics, and manage time and resources for timely and cost-effective deliverables.

Project Management Support: Project Management is a subset of Program Management and is aligned to delivery of a tool/product/service with a focus on scope, schedules, and cost management. Contractor shall provide necessary project management and administrative support to carry out the objectives of the contract successfully, provide periodic executive briefings, meeting minutes, quad charts, work requests, report the progress on key metrics, and manage time and resources for timely and cost-effective deliverables. The objective of this task area is to establish and maintain an Agile Project Management Office (PMO) framework that supports the successful implementation and execution of Agile methodologies across all projects within the program. The goal is to use agile methods to demonstrate incremental delivery, governance, risk management, communication, and collaboration.

Operational Support: Provide necessary support to develop, configure, upgrade, automate, and maintain all system components that impact a successful functionality of the requirement.

Strategy Support: Provide necessary support to develop, update, and document program strategy to include alternative options and the impacts for modernizing a comprehensive list of technology capabilities, design patterns and reference implementations to enhance reusing existing patterns and standardized solutions leading to easier governance and audits. Conduct analysis, presentation, and documentation on the alternative options for the requirement strategy to support developing design patterns and reference architectures for all capabilities and assets. The requirement strategy shall also address any relevant emerging legislative requirements.

Technical Integration Support: Provide technical support for required documentation to proceed with the adoption and implementation of the requirement to promote and communicate the principles of enterprise architecture. The contractor shall provide Site Reliability Engineering, and Product Engineering skillsets and resources to be the SMEs for the platform and its capabilities.

Transition Support: Provide support for transition that includes documentation of requirements, scope, risks, issues, details on software and hardware licenses, Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), guidelines and step-by-step instructions on implementations and integrations screenshots, and necessary training.

3.1 Task Area 1. Program Management Support

The Contractor shall provide and maintain program management expertise and shall use proven and mature program management practices and processes to effectively manage resources to meet the delivery expectations on time and budget during execution. The Contractor shall support each program workstream with project planning and management, milestone status tracking and reviews, risk, and issue identification, tracking and resolution and participation in program and release level activities. Program support shall align with the IRS-selected Software Development Life Cycle (OneSDLC) development path, methodology, and delivery approach.

Program Management support shall include the following but not limited to:

· Obtain Platform Software/Platform as a Service licenses to be consumed as "Pay-As-You-Go" mode.

· Develop and update and maintain project management plan, risk management plan, issues tracker, communication plans, maintain processes and operating procedures and Contingency Management as required.

· Record and communicate dependencies, constraints, risks, impediments to program leadership in a timely manner and track them to either resolution or mitigation.

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

· Provide coaching support to assist in IRS adoption and execution of incremental development and delivery approaches including, Agile and DevOps.

· Draft, review, and update project and program management documentation in accordance with IRS guidelines.

· Develop and maintain to include IMS, quad charts, road maps, automation strategy, automation SOP, lessons learned and executive briefs.

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

· Develop and maintain a configurable set of project guidance, documents, and plans to be tailored to each program.

· Facilitate lessons learned reviews with continuous development, documentation, communication, and application of lessons learned.

· Provide necessary project management and admin support to carry out objectives of the task order successfully.

· Create executive material and provide weekly and on-demand executive briefings, report progress on key metrics, deliver documents in timely manner and record documents at the IRS specified repository.

· Identify, record and address program risks, issues, concerns, and action items according to IRS standards and Internal Revenue Manual (IRM).

· Facilitate and support demo sessions, meetings and working sessions with the requirement leadership, and stakeholders to include road map, Integrated Master Schedule (IMS), Implementation Plan, automation, integration, testing, risk, issues, concerns, and executive briefs.

· Coordinate with the requirement program stakeholders to include Enterprise Operations (EOps), Applications Development (AD) and Cyber to conduct program management activities.

· Respond to work request(s) issued under this contract to address unforeseen circumstances, as needed for the program to achieve its stated goals and objectives.

Desired Outcome: Development and application of program management practices and controls that allow the requirement program to effectively establish and maintain control of program status, execution, risks, costs, and schedule. The Contractor shall obtain Authority to Operate (ATO) for the Platform and implement all the IRS compliance requirements to obtain the ATO including Cybersecurity requirements of System Security Packages, Enterprise Security Audit Trails, 508 approvals, Privacy approvals, Network Connectivity, One SDLC and all necessary Cyber and IRS controls.

3.2 Task Area 2. Project Management Support

The contractor shall support the project with project planning and management, milestone status monitoring and reviews, risk and issue identification, tracking, and resolution, in addition to participation in program and release level activities.

Project Management support shall include the following but not limited to:

· Develop and record the schedule for deliverables and activities.

· Conduct and facilitate meetings, workshops, architecture design sessions, provide timely meeting minutes, and capture action items.

· Provide project planning and management, milestone schedule and status tracking, and reviews.

· Participate in program and release level activities.

· Provide coaching support to assist in IRS adoption and execution of incremental development and delivery approaches including, but not limited to, Agile and DevOps.

· Produce weekly, monthly, and ad-hoc reports on the progress and status of the effort:

· Monthly Status Report are due no later than the seventh (7th) day of the new work month. The IRS and the Contractor shall agree to a format within 14 business days of award of the order. All electronic submissions of the monthly status reports shall be provided using Microsoft Office products in accordance with Section 508 compliance requirements. The IRS anticipates no more than 2 (two) ad-hoc reports will be requested during the period of performance.

· The Contractor shall coordinate monthly meetings with the IRS Task Manager, to be fulfilled by a conference call. The Contractor shall be prepared to present the monthly status report. The report shall be shared with all meeting attendees at least three (3) business days prior to the meeting.

· The Contractor shall provide the IRS detailed monthly invoices for the services being billed in the prior period. At a minimum, the invoice report must detail: Dollar amount billed to the IRS by CLIN, task, labor category, and service incident, and the dollar amount exercised versus overall order period total amount obligated.

· Provide periodic executive/stakeholder briefings on progress.

· Facilitate buy-in from executives.

· Conduct biweekly integrated project team meetings, weekly action items, IMS, stakeholder coordination, quad chart reviews, and internal and external risk forums.

· Coordinate with the requirement program stakeholders to include Enterprise Operations (EOps), AD, and Cyber to conduct project management activities.

· Store and maintain developed or updated documents on the SharePoint site.

Desired Outcome: Development and application of project management practices and controls over integration, scope, schedule, cost, quality, resources, communications, risk, procurement, and stakeholder management.

3.3 Task Area 3. Operational Support

The Contractor shall support receiving software/ hardware appliances in the IRS facilities as instructed; design, install, configure, upgrade, automate, maintain, and transition tools, software/ hardware appliances, and conduct any operational support required to assist the requirement program. Contractor is expected to coordinate and assist IRS-IT-Enterprise Operations (EOps) conduct operational support.

Operational Support shall include the following but not limited to:

· Capture and analyze the business, functional and technical requirements.

· Create a Feature List consisting of documented User Stories collected during the business process workshops into a project management tool (e.g. Asana).

· Design cloud infrastructure components for alignment with advanced security features.

· Develop an initial draft of the Technical Design Document (TDD) that includes the proposed solution design including:

· Security and Authentication

· Technical architecture

· Personas

· Entity Relationship Diagrams

· Workflow Components

· Develop a test plan that includes functional and failover tests for in-scope components including:

· Scenario based testing

· Load testing

· Functional testing

· Malicious case testing

· Develop Cybersecurity artifacts (IE System Security Plan and diagrams)

· Provide, maintain, and upgrade all cloud-hosted hardware, infrastructure, and appliances necessary for delivery of the required capabilities in accordance with all applicable IRS and Federal policies, guidelines, and directives.

Desired Outcome: Quality performance and lifecycle operations and maintenance support to all system components

3.4 Task Area 4. Strategy Support

The Contractor shall provide to build up a technically robust Technical that addresses crucial operational needs and establishes a systematic and transparent decision-making framework by providing a structured and detailed approach to developing architectural patterns, creating guidance for capabilities in the system, and interpreting processes and technical details. Strategy support shall include the following:

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

· Leverage technology strategy. Develop a view of the existing technologies, usage patterns, guidelines, and inventory of assets then document the technology strategy vision.

· Develop reference architecture for all capabilities and assets to create blueprints encompassing the entire structure and components of the Platform Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Setup and Support .

· Develop and expand design patterns to include all assets and capabilities. Expand the MVP foundation capabilities to all the other technology capabilities and patterns.

· Implement full lifecycle automation to streamline usage and enable organization-wide adoption.

· Establish Platform Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Setup and Support lifecycle management and capability ownership and assign ownership of different capabilities and functionalities.

Desired Outcome: An interconnected coherent landscape for an overview of all Technical Platform Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Setup and Support components and resources to ensure efficiency and accountability.

3.5 Task Area 5. Technical Integration

The Contractor shall provide technical integration services to implement Platform Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Setup and Support for IRS Enterprise with continuous monitoring, management, and response to anticipate and mitigate associated impacts to successful delivery. Contractor is expected to coordinate with stakeholders and other vendors to conduct technical integration and deliver a comprehensive advanced Platform Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Setup and Support integrating all intended functionalities.

Technical Integration shall include the following:

· Provide technical SMEs with abilities and experiences to facilitate design, implementation, and maintenance of Platform Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Setup and Support with existing IRS platforms and systems. Provide skill sets/resources to have "hands on the keyboard" to implement and deliver the build out of the platform solution.

· Provide Site Reliability Engineering, and Product Engineering skillsets and resources to be the SMEs for the platform and its capabilities.

· Deliver an integration implementation plan and project plan and schedule for:

· Develop, record, and align with stakeholders for the implementation and integration implementation plan to include scope, level of effort, success criteria, and high-level timeline.

· Update, record and align the project plan or schedule.

· Continuous maintenance and treatment as living documents for the project plan or schedule with accuracy.

· 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.

· Conduct 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 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 objectives.

· Provide functional, regression, performance, security test plans, test cases and test reports.

· Perform functional tests, performance tests, security scans, and regression tests.

· Work to close out any defects from the tests.

· Provide system technology, architecture, and engineering subject matter expertise.

· Provide Performance Engineering SME to develop and execute performance impact analysis report, Performance Engineering Model (PEM), Performance Test Plan, Test Report, and Standard Operating Procedures.

· Define procedures for maintaining and updating the reference architecture and design patterns after their initial publication in the repository to ensure ongoing relevance and adaptability.

· Outline the processes and procedures for managing the Platform Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Setup and Support throughout its lifecycle Include: planning, development, design, automation, deployment, and maintenance.

· Conduct a comprehensive design and review of program processes and tools, architecture, and solutions.

· Provide analysis, recommendations, and documentation for an initial capability of databases within the IRS non-production environments.

· Provide a repository of relevant information about design patterns directly aligned with the MVP.

· Evaluate and assess the Platform Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Setup and Support technology solutions for an initial capability of each application hosted in an on-prem hybrid infrastructure and external cloud provider within and IRS dev and test environment.

· Assist IRS to identify systems requiring Platform Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Setup and Support technologies, create implementation plans and execution schedules.

· Coordinate with the program stakeholders to include EOps, AD and Cyber to implement the development and execution of Platform Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Setup and Support.

· Successfully complete Platform Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Setup and Support design, development, implementation, automation, and integration.

Desired Outcome: Fully operative, systematically integrated Platform Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Setup and Support meeting all customer needs and aligned with IRS goals and mission.

3.6 Task Area 6. Transition Support

The Contractor shall plan, schedule, prepare, and conduct transition tasks to provide for the successful transition of services after the implementation, automation, and integration of Platform Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Setup and Support. The Contractor shall develop a comprehensive well-organized training program to help IRS employees handle the daily maintenance of the Platform Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Setup and Support.

Transition activities shall include the following but not limited to:

· Provide documentation of the following:

· Requirements and Scope

· Risks and Issues

· Provide Software and Hardware list to include licenses.

· Purchase required software licenses for IRS cloud environments.

· SOPs, guidelines, and step-by-step instructions with screenshots

· Provide necessary training:

· Develop the following to include but not limited to:

· Training plan and Curriculum

· Integration documented training materials

· Step by Step instructions on configuring and utilizing the Platform Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Setup and Support in paper and audio/ video formats.

· Video/ Audio training materials

· Diagrams and visuals that represent the Platform Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) Setup and Support architectures.

· Virtual classroom sessions

· Detailed usage information covering system access, navigation, and task execution.

· Conduct Training to include hands-on and over the shoulder training.

· Coordinate with IRS personnel or IRS selected Vendor and conduct transition activities.

· Define procedures for maintaining and updating the component architectures and design patterns after their initial publication in the repository to ensure ongoing relevance and adaptability.

· Migrate and store data/files from IRS Systems to the new solution.

· Follow IRS transition process that includes the following steps:

· Planning / Preparation

· Conduct Transition Planning

· Conduct assessment to ensure deliverable is operational.

· Estimate Level of Effort (LOE) and timeline for O&M transition activities

· Identify infrastructure considerations (e.g., cloud)

· Determine and confirm LOE and resources needed by the receiving O&M organization.

· Engage and Manage Stakeholders

· Communicate O&M transition timeline with stakeholders (e.g., business partners and IT delivery partners) and manage concerns.

· Ensure stakeholder alignment on O&M activities (e.g., prioritizing O&M Backlog)

· Conduct resource introductions with O&M team.

· Address Cybersecurity and Privacy Concerns

· Ensure required security tests have been completed.

· Detail cybersecurity and/or privacy implications during O&M transition (e.g., user access)

· Secure Executive Approval for O&M Transition

· Execution

· Transfer Tracked Defects and O&M Backlog

· Transfer Managed Risks and Issues

· Facilitate Knowledge Transfer

· Coordinate Enterprise Life Cycle (ELC) / One Solution Delivery Life Cycle (OneSDLC) Documentation

· Closure

· Complete O&M Transition Desired Outcome: Plan, schedule, prepare and conduct transition tasks to include documentations and training to Enterprise Operations or selected vendor to handle operations and maintenance after the implementation.

1.0 SECTION 508 OF THE REHABILITATION ACT

4.1 IR1052.239-9000 Section 508 Information, Documentation and Support (MAY 2018) In accordance with 36 CFR, Appendix C to Part 1194, the information and communication technology (ICT) products and product support services furnished in performance of this contract shall be documented to indicate the current conformance level with Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, per the 1998 Amendments, and the Architectural and Transportation Barriers Compliance Board’s Electronic and Information Technology Accessibility Standards. At no time during the performance of the award shall the level of conformance go below the level of conformance in place at the time of award. At no additional cost, the Contractor shall provide information, documentation, and support relative to the supplies and services as described in this Performance Work Statement. The Contractor shall maintain this detailed listing of compliant products for the full contract term, including forms of extensions, and shall ensure that it is current within five calendar days after award and within three calendar days of changes in products being utilized as follows:

_X_ Chapter 6: Support Documentation and Services _X_ 601 General _X_ 601.1 _X_ 602 Support Documentation _X_ 602.1 _X_ 602.2 _X_ 602.3 _X_ 602.4 X_ 603 Support Services _X_ 603.1 _X_ 603.2 _X_ 603.3

4.2 IR1052.239.9002 Section 508 Services (JUNE 2022)

All contracts, solicitations, purchase orders, delivery orders and interagency agreements that contain a requirement of services which will result in the delivery of a new or updated information and communication technology (ICT) item/product must conform to the applicable provisions of the appropriate technical standards in 36 CFR, Appendix C to Part 1194, and functional performance criteria in 36 CFR Chapter 3, unless an agency exception to this requirement exists at FAR39.2024 Exceptions.

The following technical standards and provisions have been determined to be applicable to this contract:

Chapter 4: Hardware 401 General 401.1 402 Closed Functionality

402.1 402.2(1-6) 402.3 402.4 402.5 403 Biometrics 403.1 404 Preservation of Information Provided for Accessibility 404.1 405 Privacy 405.1 406 Standard Connections 406.1 407 Operable Parts

407.1 407.2 407.3 407.4 407.5 407.6 407.7 407.8 408 Display Screens

408.1 408.2 408.3 409 Status Indictors 409.1 410 Color Coding 410.1 411 Audible Signals 411.1 412 ICT with Two-Way Communication

412.1 412.2 412.3 412.4 412.5 412.6 412.7 412.8 413 Closed Caption Processing Technologies 413.1 414 Audio Description Processing Technologies 414.1 415 User Controls for Captions and Audio Descriptions 415.1 _X__ Chapter 5: Software X 501 General _X 501.1 _X 502 Interoperability with Assistive Technology _X 502.1 _X 502.2 _X 502.3 _X 502.4(A-G) _X 503 Applications _X 503.1 _X 503.2 _X 503.3 _X 503.4 _X 504 Authoring Tools _X 504.1 _X 504.2 _X 504.3 _X 504.4 _X__ Chapter 7: Referenced Standards X 701 General _X 701.1 _X 702 Incorporation by Reference _X 702.1 702.2 _X 702.3 _X 702.4 702.5 702.6 702.7 702.8 702.9 _X 702.10

The standards do not require the installation of specific accessibility-related software or the attachment of an assistive technology device, but merely require that the ICT be compatible with such software and devices so that it can be made accessible if so required by the agency in the future.

The following functional performance criteria (36 CFR Chapter 3) apply to this contract.

_X__ Chapter 3: Functional Performance Criteria _X 301 General _X 301.1 _X 302 Functional Performance Criteria _X 302.1 _X 302.2 _X 302.3 _X 302.4 _X 302.5 _X 302.6 _X 302.7 _X 302.8 _X 302.9

5.0 DELIVERABLES

The contractor shall be responsible for the following deliverables that will be measured for success against timeliness and quality.

5.1 Task Order Kickoff Meeting

Within five (5) business days of task order award, the contractor shall meet with Government representatives at a mutually agreed upon location or via teleconference. The intent of this meeting is to initiate the communication process between the IRS and the contractor by introducing key task order participants, explaining their roles, reviewing communication ground rules, and assuring a common understanding of task order requirements and objectives.

The completion of this briefing shall result in the following:

· The IRS may show the applicable facilities to the contractor if work will be performed on at an IRS site.

· The Government may provide Government Furnished Equipment (GFE) and/or Government Furnished Information (GFI)

· Any issues concerning the contractor employee security clearances will be discussed.

· The contractor shall demonstrate confirmation of their understanding of the work to be accomplished under this Performance Work Statement

· The contractor shall provide meeting notes (inclusive of any follow-up actions) to the Government within five (5) business days after the meeting.

5.2 Schedule of Deliverables

The Contractor shall provide the deliverables as described in Table 1 below during the performance of this contract. All contractor deliverables or work products shall remain categorized as "Official Use Only.” The release of any portion must be authorized in writing by the Government. The deliverables and work products will be provided in electronic format and shall comply with all applicable standards of Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act.

The final format and content requirements, if not stated in the Performance Work Statement (PWS), may be mutually developed, and agreed upon among the IRS Program Manager (PM), the Contractor and the Contracting Officer’s Representative (COR).

Table 1: Schedule of Deliverables Task Area 1. Program Management Support

Task Area 2. Project Management Support

Task Area 3. Operational Support

Task Area 4. Strategy Support

Per IMS

Task Area 5. Technical Integration

Task Area 6. Transition Support