Pilot IRS - update June 2020.pdf

The purpose of this posting is to provide an update of the Internal Revenue Service’s (IRS) progress over the last 3-6 months for requirements that are part of the Pilot IRS portfolio. As noted in the initial post-ing, the IRS anticipated issuing a solicitation for at least one of three potential projects, under the auspices of the Pilot IRS program. This posting provides an update on the status of those three/initial projects, and also includes information on two new projects.

Update on Pilot IRS Projects Since January 2020, IRS released two requests for information for two of the three requirements.

IRS Procurement Data Visualization

The Office of the Chief Procurement Officer (OCPO) consumes and manages data originating from more than 10 procurement support systems. The data included in these systems ranges from structured to un-structured data, varies wildly in terms of ‘clean’ and amount/type of data, and represents a huge oppor-tunity for OCPO to demonstrate a value proposition to its customers. Our goal is to aggregate infor-mation across systems and provide real time views into both pre-award acquisition planning elements and post-award contract management data (particularly emergency acquisitions and transactions associated with particular types of funding or legislative requirements). Additionally, tools that would help track the input data (i.e., status of actions, average time to process, processes used to issue the transaction) would be considered under this requirement. One of the acquisition strategies that IRS is considering for this requirement is GSA IT Schedule 70, and IRS currently anticipates that the solicitation for this require-ment will be issued between July 15th and August 15th.

Enterprise Systems Testing - Synthetic Data

The IRS uses data to test and improve various systems, and encounters challenges around creating syn-thetic data sets and keeping them current. By generating a robust synthetic data creation capability based on a simulation of the nation, the IRS can test systems based on fictitious data about people and business entities. Due to overwhelming interest from industry, as reflected in the responses received from the re-quest for information IRS issued in April 2020, this requirement may be procured in FY21.

Enterprise Systems Testing - Code-Free Test Automation Tool Analysis

The IRS supports various testing activities on more than 200 applications in different environments, in-cluding System Test, Production Simulation, and Performance Testing. The IRS enterprise systems test-ing domain is interested in exploring “code-free” test automation tools where system SME’s input test cri-teria through a user interface and the software application does the underlying work to execute the appro-priate test scripts in an automated and repeatable manner to increase the overall quality of testing with a potentially significant reductions in test phase timeframes and IRS personnel resources. Due to over-whelming interest from industry as reflected in the responses received from the request for information issued in April 2020, this requirement may be procured in FY21.

Additionally, two other requirements are being contemplated as potential candidates for Pilot IRS.

Cyber Crimes Data Ingestion Initiative

Criminal Investigation Division (CI) within the IRS is interested in exploring innovative data ingestion technologies. Specifically, technologies that will allow digital files with arbitrary layouts and formats to be parsed and their data ingested into a structured, user-defined ontology automatically while preserving data relationships, without user intervention. The technology must be able to handle file layouts from new sources that have not previously been identified, without modification. The technology must operate autonomously within CI's technology environment without any interaction with the vendor, and little to no interaction with the user.

Cyber Crimes Cryptocurrency Initiative Currently, there are few investigative resources for tracing transactions involving privacy cryptocur-rency coins, Layer 2 network protocol transactions, side-chain ledger transactions, or transactions on distributed ledgers that are adopting signature algorithms that provide privacy to illicit actors. IRS CI is interested in examining applications which will allow an investigation to more easily trace privacy coins and other protocols that provide anonymity to illicit actors. This would allow investigations to be more effective, as well as facilitate a higher level of deterrence by making it harder to conceal criminal activity. Solutions would also provide an investigative efficiency that is currently limited.

Thank you for your continued interest and engagement on IRS emerging acquisition projects and the Pilot IRS Procurement Framework.