RFI - PRAC20R0001 - Fraud Data and Analytics Support.pdf

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Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency Pandemic Response Accountability Committee

Request for Information: PRAC20R0001 Investigative Support Tools and Services

September 9, 2020

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REQUEST FOR INFORMATION

Fraud Data and Analytics Investigative Support

1.0 Introduction

The Pandemic Response Accountability Committee (PRAC) is releasing a Request for Information (RFI) to obtain responses from vendors and other interested parties on how an interested contractor could provide a wide range of fraud data and analytics investigative support. The mission of the PRAC’s Oversight & Accountability directorate is to conduct and support oversight of the federal Coronavirus response and funds provided in the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act); Paycheck Protection Program and Health Care Enhancement Act; Families First Coronavirus Response Act; and the Coronavirus Preparedness and Response Supplemental Appropriations Act.

THIS IS A REQUEST FOR INFORMATION (RFI) ONLY. This RFI is issued solely for information and planning purposes – it does not constitute a Request for Proposal (RFP) or a promise to issue an RFP in the future. This request for information does not commit the Government to contract for any supply or service whatsoever. Further, the PRAC is not at this time seeking proposals and will not accept unsolicited proposals. Respondents are advised that the U.S. Government will not pay for any information or administrative costs incurred in response to this RFI; all costs associated with responding to this RFI will be solely at the interested party’s expense. Not responding to this RFI does not preclude participation in any future RFP, if any is issued. It is the responsibility of the potential offerors to monitor sites for additional information pertaining to this requirement.

2.0 Overview

The CARES Act and three related pieces of emergency legislation provide approximately $2.4 trillion in economic relief to individual citizens, loans for businesses, support for hospitals and other medical providers, and economic relief for impacted industries. In addition, the CARES Act creates the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee (PRAC) composed of federal Offices of Inspector General to "promote transparency and conduct and support oversight of covered funds and the Coronavirus response to (1) prevent and detect fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement; and (2) mitigate major risks that cut across program and agency boundaries."

Rather than a stand-alone organization, the PRAC is a Committee of the Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and Efficiency (CIGIE), an independent entity established within the executive branch by the Inspector General Act of 1978, as amended, that includes the 75 statutorily created federal Inspectors General with a mission to address integrity, economy, and effectiveness issues that transcend individual government agencies. The PRAC staff is composed of approximately 25 full time equivalent positions, for all duties, and anticipates some level of co-sourcing with contractors. Additionally, the PRAC has limited operational time with a statutory sunset of 2025.

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The PRAC’s mission is to serve the American public by promoting transparency and the coordinated oversight of the Federal Government's coronavirus response to prevent and detect fraud, waste, abuse, and mismanagement and to identify and mitigate major risks that cross program and agency boundaries. The PRAC works with Inspectors General to develop recommendations for program improvements, refer matters for criminal investigations, and identify misspent covered funds for recovery. The PRAC’s work helps to safeguard the Federal Government’s more than $2.4 trillion in emergency aid to individuals, businesses, and State, local, and Tribal governments nationwide.

To further accomplish its mission, the PRAC will work with Federal Inspectors General and other oversight partners to identify major cross-cutting risks by using data analytics and risk assessments. Such risks could include criminal fraud schemes, internal control weaknesses with the disbursement and accounting of covered funds, and deficiencies with coordination across agencies and programs, among other things. The PRAC envisions providing leading-edge data analytics, visualization, and risk modeling to identify indicators of fraud, waste, abuse, or mismanagement. The PRAC anticipates collecting datasets including System for Award Management (SAM), the Death Master File, debarred lists and other datasets that can be used to identify potential fraudulent behavior. The PRAC will also have coronavirus response award data pursuant to Office of Management and Budget Memoranda 20-21. The PRAC operates a cloud-based data warehousing system.

The PRAC will use, or coordinate with Inspectors General to use, data analytics and other appropriate methods to identify suspected fraud and will refer potential criminal conduct to the relevant Inspector General for investigation so that wrongdoers can be held accountable for their actions. The PRAC will also use data and analytics to identify patterns, trends and outliers in large data sets that could indicate the existence of fraud, waste, abuse or mismanagement for the purposes of identifying criminal fraud rings, bad actors who may have committed fraud against multiple agencies, or fraud indicators that can be used to prevent fraud in the future. When there is a reasonable belief that Federal criminal law has been violated, the PRAC will report such information to the Attorney General, as required by statute.

3.0. Overview of Technologies and Solutions Sought

This Request for Information (RFI) is intended to inform the PRAC on the current status of industry sources, business practices, tools, approaches, technical capacity, and operational capability related to fraud data and analytics for use in investigative support that could be leveraged to further the PRAC’s mission.

Responses to this RFI will be evaluated and considered to assist the PRAC in identifying best in class options for developing the Oversight & Accountability program that allows the PRAC to meet its statutory requirements and mission. At a minimum, responses to this RFI must encompass the tools and services available, and a description of how they can be utilized by the PRAC in the accomplishment of its mission.

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If possible, responses to this RFI should also include examples of how the tools or services have already been or are being utilized by government entities either in the identification of fraud, waste, abuse or mismanagement of government funds or to support a government agency’s investigative mission. Additionally, respondents should describe their normal pricing structure (one time or ongoing monthly/annual costs; variable costs based on number of users/amount of data/number of members or other variables) for each component of the solution (if multiple components). Finally, respondents are asked to specifically address whether their capability or solution is implemented on-premise vs. cloud.

It is important to note that this RFI is focused on the PRAC’s broad oversight, accountability and investigative missions, which include multi-agency collaboration and coordination, as well as conducting investigations and supporting/sponsoring investigative training. It is also important to note that the data the PRAC has access to is not transactional level, but rather historical in nature, thus the PRAC has limited ability to use data and analytics to prevent fraud, waste, abuse or mismanagement. Instead, the PRAC envisions gleaning insights from large data sets that can be used to identify trends, patterns and outliers that could indicate the existence of fraud, waste, abuse or mismanagement on a large scale. Respondents are asked to provide input on alternative approaches or additional issues to consider that might benefit the PRAC and/or our understanding of a given solution for investigative support tools and services.

Capabilities: Fraud Data and Analytics Investigative Support Tools In this RFI, the PRAC is interested in learning about tools and services that could support the following requirements:

• Risk analysis – tools to assess and analyze potential risks related to data sets, utilizing predefined, or user defined, risk indicators

• Fraud detection – tools or services to help identify potential or suspected fraud within a data set

• Analytic modeling tools or approaches using diverse data sets, including tools or techniques to enhance the reliability of data

• Data matching tools

• Link analysis tools and data

• Data visualization tools or services

• Collaboration tools – ability to collaborate virtually with outside entities, and share and edit documents, attend virtual meetings, conduct training events, etc.

• Dark Web analysis tools and data

• Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) analysis and data

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4.0 Responses

4.1 Interested parties are requested to respond to this RFI with their completed response to the Contracting Officer, Rebecca Mills, via email at Rebecca.mills@cigie.gov.

4.2 White papers in Microsoft Word for Office 2000 compatible format are due no later than 30 OCTOBER 2020, 05:00 PM EST. Responses shall be limited to three separate emails and no more than 50 pages. Proprietary information, if any, should be minimized and MUST BE CLEARLY MARKED. To aid the Government, please segregate proprietary information. Please be advised that all submissions become Government property and will not be returned.

4.3. Section 1 of the white paper shall provide administrative information, and shall include the following as a minimum:

4.3.1. Name, mailing address, overnight delivery address (if different from mailing address), phone number, fax number, and e-mail of designated point of contact.

4.3.2. Recommended contracting strategy.

4.3.3. Either 1) copies of executed non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) with the contractors supporting PRAC in technical evaluations or 2) a statement that the respondee will not allow the Government to release its proprietary data to the Government support contractors. In the absence of either of the foregoing, the Government will assume that the respondee does NOT agree to the release of its submission to Government support contractors.

4.3.4. Business type (large business, small business, small disadvantaged business, 8(a)-certified small disadvantaged business, HUBZone small business, woman-owned small business, very small business, veteran-owned small business, service-disabled veteran-owned small business).

5.0 Terms and Conditions

5.1 FAR 52.215-3 Request for Information or Solicitation for Planning Purposes (Oct 1997)

(a)The Government does not intend to award a contract on the basis of this solicitation or to otherwise pay for the information solicited except as an allowable cost under other contracts as provided in subsection 31.205-18, Bid and proposal costs, of the Federal Acquisition Regulation.

(b)Although "proposal" and "offeror" are used in this Request for Information, your response will be treated as information only. It shall not be used as a proposal.

(c) This solicitation is issued for the purpose of gathering information on fraud data and analytical support available in the industry.

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PRAC representatives may or may not choose to meet with potential offerors. Such discussions would only be intended to get further clarification of potential capability to meet the requirements, especially any development and certification risks.

5.2 Disclaimers and Important Notes:

If your response contains confidential, proprietary, or privileged information, you must include a cover sheet with your response marked as follows identifying the specific pages containing the confidential, proprietary or privileged information:

5.2.1 Notice of Restriction on Disclosure and Use of Data:

Pages [list applicable pages by number] of this response may contain confidential, proprietary or privileged information that is exempt from public disclosure. Such information may be used or disclosed only for the purposes described in this RFI PRAC20R0001. The Federal Government may use or disclose any information that is not appropriately marked or otherwise restricted, regardless of source.

In addition, (1) the header and footer of every page that contains confidential, proprietary or privileged information must be marked as follows: “Contains Confidential, Proprietary or Privileged Information Exempt from Public Disclosure” and (2) every line and paragraph containing proprietary, privileged or trade secret information must be clearly marked with double brackets or highlighting.

5.3 Proprietary Information:

Because information received in response to this RFI maybe used to structure future programs and FOAs or otherwise be made available to the public, respondents are strongly advised to NOT include any information in their responses that might be considered business sensitive, proprietary or otherwise confidential. The Federal Government does not guarantee confidentiality of the information received. Although PRAC asks that no confidential business information be submitted, it is PRAC’s practice to protect the provided information and make it available on a need-to-know basis only to Federal Government personnel and contractors who will be using this information on behalf of the Federal Government. However, PRAC can guarantee that information will be free from access by others, during transmission or while stored in its system or otherwise in PRAC’s custody or control or in the custody or control of another federal agency or their contractors, and the Federal Government and its contractors will have no liability whatsoever for disclosure of such information.

If a respondent chooses to submit business sensitive, proprietary or otherwise confidential information, it must be clearly and conspicuously marked as such in the response. Responses

Pandemic Response Accountability Committee Page 7 of 7 containing confidential, proprietary or privileged information must be conspicuously marked as described below. Failure to comply with these marking requirements may result in the disclosure of the unmarked information under the Freedom of Information Act or otherwise. The Federal Government is not liable for the disclosure or use of unmarked information, and may use or disclose such information for any purpose.

5.4 EVALUATION AND ADMINISTRATION BY FEDERAL AND NON-FEDERAL

PERSONNEL: Federal employees are subject to the non-disclosure requirements of a criminal statute, the Trade Secrets Act, 18 U.S.C. § 1905. The Federal Government may seek the advice of qualified non-Federal personnel. The Federal Government also may use non-Federal personnel to conduct routine, nondiscretionary administrative activities. The respondents, by submitting their response, consent to PRAC providing their response to non-Federal parties.

Non-Federal parties given access to responses will be subject to an appropriate obligation of confidentiality prior to being given the access.

6.0 Summary

THIS IS A REQUEST FOR INFORMATION (RFI) ONLY to identify sources that can provide investigative support tools. The information provided in the RFI is subject to change and is not binding on the Government. The PRAC has not made a commitment to procure any of the items discussed, and release of this RFI should not be construed as such a commitment or as authorization to incur cost for which reimbursement would be required or sought. All submissions become Government property and will not be returned.