Added: Oct 22, 2008 9:17 am
THIS IS A REQUEST FOR INFORMATION (RFI), as defined in FAR 15.201(e). The Internal Revenue Service is requesting industry comments in response to the topics and questions below. The purpose of this RFI is for information, planning, and market research analysis only. This RFI is not a formal solicitation nor is it a request for proposal (RFP). Any formal solicitation will be announced separately. The Government is not responsible for any cost that vendors may incur to prepare responses to this RFI. Responses to this RFI from industry are strictly voluntary.
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is requesting industry comments for innovative solutions from third party vendors using a secure outbound methodology for the electronic transmission of IRS tax liens and lien recording fees to SLJs throughout the country.
The size of a single IRS lien record is approximately 51K. Data accounts for 21K and the lien image accounts for 30K of that record size. The largest file size will be approximately 4.2M for an XML file and 6.0M for a PDF file.
Vendors are asked to address the following:
a) Describe in detail your electronic document transmission process, including inbound and outbound web-service capability and error processing for rejected documents.
b) Describe in detail the precautions that are taken to ensure the safe and secure transmission of documents to include the use of digital certificates. Discuss the industry data security standards to which you adhere and your knowledge and compliance with IRS, Department of Treasury, Office of Management and Budget (OMB), National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and Federal Information Processing Standards (FIPS) guidance, including the following:
-Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) Act of 2002;
-The Taxpayer Browsing Protection Act of 1997, Unauthorized Access (UNAX)
-Department of Treasury Directive TD P 85-01
-Treasury Security Manual TD P 71-10
-Internal Revenue Manual 10.8.1
-OMB Circular A-130, Management of Federal Information Resources
-OMB Circular Policies M-06-15, M-06-16, and M-06-19
-NIST Special Publication 800-53 and 800-53A
-FIPS 199 and 200
The standards are available on the Internet.
c) Describe in detail, your processes for handling minor and major systems failure, either at your end or at the SLJ end.
d) Describe in detail the customer service or Help Desk support your firm provides, such as hours of operation and services provided.
e) Discuss in detail your billing/payment process as it relates to payment for your service fees and SLJ filing/recording fees.
f) Describe in detail your reporting systems. Include information about the types of statistical logs, audit logs, and status reports that are produced, maintained, and provided to a submitter.
g) Describe in detail the various types of documents you transmit electronically. Include a discussion of individual record size and file size of transmissions.
All proprietary information sent in response to this RFI should be marked as such and will be handled accordingly.
Responses to the Request for Information (RFI) should be sent to the IRS Procurement Office via email in Microsoft Word format. All responses should be delivered no later than 3:00 PM EDT, November 19, 2008, and sent to Deborah Dixon, deborah.g.dixon@irs.gov. No telephonic discussions will be held.
