ARRA EOPS Mainframe Upgrade

RECOVERY - THIS NOTICE IS PROVIDED FOR INFORMATION PURPOSES ONLY. THIS OPPORTUNITY WAS AVAILABLE ONLY TO UNISYS CORPORATION, FOR REASONS DESCRIBED BELOW.



In compliance with the transparency and accountability requirements associated with the supplemental appropriations provided by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), Pub.L. 111-5, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) posts this notice of award of Delivery Order 0052 issued against an existing contract (TIRNO-D-08-00003). This purchase includes hardware upgrades, one Central Processing Unit (CPU) and one Capacity Backup feature (CBU), to existing IRS IBM z9 mainframe processors. The delivery order was a firm-fixed price action issued against an existing indefinite delivery indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contract awarded to Unisys Corp., a large business.



The delivery order was awarded to Unisys Corp. without further competition because only Unisys can provide the continuity and expert level of service the IRS requires in maintaining the security and integrity of the Tier 1 (mainframe) computing systems. These computing systems are critical components of the IRSs tax collection infrastructure and must be available on an uninterrupted basis for processing tax returns and providing the public access to electronic filing, online tax manuals and other critical tax related activities.



The CPU and CBU being acquired will become one of hundreds of parts functioning together within each mainframe being upgraded. Unisys has a contract with IRS to maintain these mainframes. Introducing another vendor to provide, warrant, and maintain specific parts within those mainframes would have introduced complexities and unacceptable risks into the maintenance process. It would have interfered with Unisyss ability to provide, and IRSs ability to enforce, contractually-defined service levels.



These hardware upgrades are needed to support new workloads in the IRS mainframe environment. Mission critical tax applications will be affected by the changes implemented by ARRA such that increased volumes and changes will require additional processing resources. The workloads include processing new Business Master File tax forms and handling increased volumes of queries to support customer interactions with the IRS for other tax application systems such as Corporate File OnLine. This acquisition will provide the additional processor capacity needed to process these workloads.