Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Transformation and Strategy Office (TSO) Taxpayer 360 Employee Tools Solution

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Contract Opportunity

Internal Revenue Service (IRS)

Transformation and Strategy Office (TSO)

Taxpayer 360 Employee Tools Solution

Request for Information (RFI)

Introduction

This is a Request for Information (RFI) (hereinafter Notice). This is NOT a solicitation for proposals, proposal abstracts, request for bids or quotations, nor a promise to issue a solicitation in the future. The purpose of this RFI is for the Government to obtain knowledge and information for project planning purposes only.

No proprietary, classified, confidential, or sensitive information should be included in responses to this Notice, unless otherwise appropriately marked by the Respondent. The Government reserves the right to use any non-proprietary technical information received in response to this Notice in any resultant solicitation(s). Do Not Submit any Proposals/Offers in response to this Notice.

The Government has interest in and is seeking information regarding the capability of providing services pertaining to creating new specialized tax training courses, assessing existing Agency training courses, and strategic tax advisory services.

Request for Information Number: 24-IRA-020-OITA

Project Title / Short Description: Taxpayer 360 Employee Tools Solution

PSC or FSC Code: DA01 IT and Telecom – Business Application/Application Development Support Services (Labor)

NAICS Codes: 541519 Other Computer Related Services

Release Date: March 19, 2024

Response Date: April 5, 2024, 6:00pm EST

Please submit RFI responses to Tanya.E.Outland@irs.gov

This RFI is posted on SAM.gov and GSA. Please respond to SAM.gov via email or GSA eBuy portal.

Questions and Answers: Please submit RFI questions to Tanya.E.Outland@irs.gov by March 26, 2024, at 6:00pm EST.

The Government will post all RFI questions and answers to the industry via sam.gov by March 28, 2024, at 6:00pm EST.

Primary Point of Contact and Contact Information:

Name: Tanya Outland

Title: Front Door Liaison

Email: Tanya.E.Outland@irs.gov

Taxpayer 360 Employee Tools Solution

The IRS is seeking vendors to oversee delivery of a common service for to enable taxpayer-facing employees to efficiently perform the actions they are entitled to perform including actions that result in changes to the current taxpayer data.

As a starting point, the IRS is focusing first on Customer Service Representatives (CSR) in the call center environment, seeking to develop an integrated interface that seamlessly integrates into all applicable tools and data necessary to resolve a taxpayer call.

Description of Services

Currently the IRS data required to answer taxpayer queries is disparately located throughout the IRS ecosystem in many different locations and is in many different formats and lacks modernized accessibility (i.e. minimal APIs). These systems are often not integrated – they don’t always talk or connect to one another, can be challenging to navigate, use outdated formats such as command code queries to access the data, have significant redundancy, and occasionally contain conflicting information. Additionally, some data that would help to quickly resolve queries is not currently readily accessible and the ability to make necessary updates to taxpayer account data is limited. To obtain necessary data users often are required to log into multiple systems and do extensive research before they can obtain the answers they need resulting in delays and user frustration.

The IRS will look to improve employee tools to provide faster and consistently accurate information to taxpayers with significantly reduced employee burden. As part of this goal, the IRS is looking to improve the effectiveness of call center representatives.

The contractor should be capable of working with the IRS’ IT teams to build integrations into existing IRS data systems to provide the latest relevant taxpayer data with IRS to Customer Service employees information to efficiently perform the actions they are entitled to perform including actions that result in changes to the current taxpayer data.

The contractor should be capable of utilizing these data integration points to provide the latest relevant taxpayer data in an integrated “single pane of glass” view.

The contractor should be capable of designing the layout and content of this interface to maximize useability for the employee, including incorporating agent assistor tools and modern technology (AI, LLM, etc) to provide contextual information and assistance. Users should be able to customize their view for maximum usability and to add additional data sources as they become available.

The contractor should be capable of integrating into a broader IRS call center ecosystem that will require building linkages to existing platforms for call center operations.

The contractor should be capable of delivering on the above while maintaining IRS security, accessibility, and performance standards, including ensuring safe and effecting authentication and authorization of users of the system.

The contractor should be capable of designing a robust testing process to demonstrate efficacy, identify and manage risks.

The contractor should be capable of defining KPIs to measure success of the prototype and ensuring that the system is able to capture data within the system to monitor and verify achievement of KPIs.

RFI Instructions

Responses to this RFI are requested in three (3) parts and must be submitted using Attachment 2 RFI Response Template.

Part I: Company Profile - IRS seeks company profile information about the firms that provide services positioned to address the requirements discussed above.

Part II: Capability - IRS seeks Industry responses to specific questions. Do not include any support documentation for any company other than your own. This is an analysis of your company’s abilities.

Part III: Questions and Comments – IRS will accept open questions and comments.

Part I: Company Profile Information

Offerors are required to provide the following company information:

1. Company Name and Address


2. Company technical Point of Contact (POC) information to include name, title, telephone number, and email address.


3. Applicable NAICS (North American Industry Classification System) Code


4. List active governmentwide contracts that your company has been awarded (GWACs, IDIQs, and BPAs – include applicable SIN)


5. Business Classification / Socio-Economic Status (e.g., large, small, 8(a), women owned, hub-zone, SDB, Service-Disabled Veteran Owned)


6. Subcontracting/partnering/teaming possibilities.

Part II: Capability

Responses to this Notice should include the following:

Request Structure

1. In your estimation, is it reasonable to have these separate requests (data integrations, interface design and deployment, etc.) on a single Performance Work Statement (i.e., is it likely that your company or any company could perform well on each of them)?

Pricing

1. How would you structure the team members needed to successfully deliver on this potential requirement?


2. What labor categories do you think are applicable to each task, and why?


3. What level of expertise would those resources have?


4. What hourly rates would your company charge for the different levels of expertise needed?


5. What is a ballpark estimated price to successfully deliver these requirements?

Experience/Expertise

1. Does this request lend itself to a contractor that is a large business or small business? Does business size matter when it comes to meeting this requirement?


2. What is your company’s prior experience with developing, assessing, and delivering integrated data access interfaces to consolidate core information on a user base (e.g,. CRM systems), especially for larger organizations with 15k+ employee users?

General

1. Please provide any additional insights that would help us craft the requirement(s) to best meet our need to provide our future and existing enforcement workforce with technical tax expertise in these high-priority areas of taxation.


2. Is there another PSC or NAICS code that you recommend for this scope of work?

Part III: Questions and Comments

Open questions and comments relevant to this RFI should be provided for consideration.

Other Attachments

Attachment 2 –Taxpayer 360 Response.xlsx RFI response template.

Terms and Conditions Regarding this Notice

This Notice does not obligate the Government to award a contract or otherwise pay for the information provided in response. All costs associated with responding to this Notice are solely at the responding party's expense. The Government reserves the right to use information provided by respondents for any purpose deemed necessary and legally appropriate. Further, the Government may contact the vendor for additional information regarding the information submitted as part of this market research effort. Any organization responding to this notice should ensure that its response is complete and sufficiently detailed to allow the Government to determine the organization’s qualifications to perform the work. Respondents are advised that the Government is under no obligation to acknowledge receipt of the information received or provide feedback to respondents with respect to any information submitted. After a review of the responses received, a pre-solicitation synopsis and solicitation may be published in Government Point of Entry or other similar source (e.g., GSA E-buy). However, responses to this notice will not be considered adequate responses to a solicitation.

Responses to this notice are not offers and cannot be accepted by the Government to form a binding contract or agreement. The Government will not be obligated to pursue any acquisition alternative as a result of this notice. Responses to the notice will not be returned. Not responding to this notice does not preclude participation in any future solicitation if one is issued.

No proprietary, classified, confidential, or sensitive information should be included in responses to this Notice, unless otherwise appropriately marked by the Respondent. The Government reserves the right to use any non-proprietary technical information received in response to this Notice in any resultant solicitation(s).

Do Not Submit any Proposals/Offers in response to this Notice.

Thank you for your response to this Request for Information.

Attachments/Links