United States - Treasury-wide Data Governance and Analytics (DGA) Initiative

Description

Added: Jun 06, 2019 4:23 pm
Modified: Jun 06, 2019 4:43 pmTrack Changes

This RFI is associated with an earlier Special Notice titled "SN-TREASURY-DATA-ACT-MAY2019".

Department of the Treasury
Office of the Procurement Executive
Request for Information - Treasury-wide Data Governance and Analytics (DGA) Initiative.
Response Date: JUNE 17, 2019

TO ALL INTERESTED PARTIES
Sources Sought - THIS REQUEST FOR INFORMATION (RFI) IS RELEASED PURSUANT TO FEDERAL ACQUISITION REGULATION (FAR) PART 10, MARKET RESEARCH.
Disclaimer - This RFI is issued solely for information and planning purposes. This notice should not be construed as a commitment by the Government for any purpose other than market research. This announcement does not commit the Government to any contractual agreement. The Government is not seeking proposals and will not accept unsolicited proposals.
No reimbursement will be made for any costs associated with providing information in response to this announcement or any follow-up information requests.
Respondents will NOT be notified of the results of the analysis. All data received in response to this Sources Sought synopsis that is marked or designated as corporate or proprietary information will be fully protected from release outside the Government. The Government shall not be liable for or suffer any consequential damages for any proprietary information not properly identified. Proprietary information will be safeguarded in accordance with all applicable Government regulations. All documentation shall become the property of the Government and will not be returned.
High-Level Summary
The Department of Treasury, Office of the Procurement Executive is requesting information about potential automation approaches/tools that will help it analyze and automate multiple data sets regarding contract and obligation data. We are primarily interested in three things: 1) are we on the right page / are we missing anything in our pursuit of solutions for improving the integrity of financial and non-financial data elements; 2) are there any existing examples of tools deployed and in use in this space?; and, 3) what's a rough estimate of how much tools would cost, relative to their ROI? Although there is no guarantee, we currently plan on issuing a solicitation and awarding one or more contracts to support this effort; additionally, based on the responses to this RFI, we currently plan on performing additional market research (via one-on-one meetings) with a subset of the parties that respond.
Background
The Department of the Treasury, Office of the Procurement Executive (OPE) is releasing this Request for Information (RFI) to address the potential for introducing innovative technologies, tools, and processes to support Departmental and Bureau-level compliance with the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act of 2014 (DATA Act) and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Memorandum M-18-16 entitled "Appendix A to OMB Circular A-123, Management of Reporting and Data Integrity Risk." This memo calls for, in part, a plan for improving the integrity of financial and non-financial award data elements reported in accordance with the DATA Act.
The Department of the Treasury, the Office of the Deputy Chief Financial Officer (ODCFO), OPE, and the Office of Performance Budgeting (OPB) are working collaboratively to address our governance structure, reporting design, policy and guidance, as well as our processes and controls in support of the above requirements. In addition, we are focusing on testing plans to address high-risk reported data and to ensure an effective Internal Control Over Reporting (ICOR) process across all Bureaus. To that end, we are keenly interested in tools that are able to automate the data sets in an agile manner, supporting the requirements of OMB Memo M-18-16 to effectively manage data integrity risk.
The RFI also encompasses our requirements and process for performing verification and validation of award elements reported to the Federal Procurement Data System - Next Generation (FPDS-NG). The Treasury Senior Procurement Executive (SPE) and all Bureau Chief Procurement Officers (BCPOs) perform quarterly independent validation and verification (V&V) of FPDS-NG data elements and submit annual certifications of data accuracy to the Office of Federal Procurement Policy (OFPP). This V&V supports both the Data Act and the quarterly certification process as well as providing additional Procurement-related data checks of publicly available FPDS-NG data.
Goals of our RFI
Our goal with this RFI is to gather information on potential areas of focus for contractor support to improve near and midterm (FY 2019, 4th quarter and FY 2020) data accuracy results. Three primary areas are being addressed:
• Improvement in DATA Act reporting across three primary factors - completeness, timeliness, and accuracy;
• Reduction in manual processing times and FTE hours associated with review, correction, and reporting of data elements; and,
• Congruent with the President's Management Agenda (PMA), approaches to leverage data as a strategic asset across the Department and shift from low to high-value work, with an emphasis on technology enablers and enterprise-wide tools for facilitating oversight and promoting transparency.
Current Process
The Treasury has created a Data Quality Plan which is intended to bolster the integrity of DATA Act reporting in service to taxpayer constituents, vendors, recipients of federal award dollars, and other stakeholders, as well as for meeting various leadership needs in management decision-making. The government-wide DATA Act Program Management Office (PMO) has identified 57 data elements as part of core DATA Act reporting requirements.
The Department utilizes a Prioritization and Remediation Framework to address DATA Act quality issues, which includes a six-step process for prioritizing and reviewing all 57 reported DATA Act elements. The six steps are:
1. Start with a population of audited data elements;
2. Sort the data elements based on management's discretion of relevancy;
3. Further sort the data elements by risk (e.g., placing emphasis on data where direct entry occurs);
4. Assess the state of existing controls related to the data elements;
5. Determine if any further controls are needed; and
6. Identify and implement targeted remediation actions for data elements that fall below a specified audit accuracy rate.
The 57 data elements contain a mix of financial and procurement elements, and there is some overlap. Procurement focuses on elements reported from agency contract writing systems through interface with FPDS-NG.
The following are examples of FPDS-NG data errors which are candidates for automated correction:
1. In the case of a commodities purchase, the Place of Performance ZIP+4 field value incorrectly indicates the address where a product will be used instead of where it was manufactured or supplied from stock.
2. The Date Signed entry is later then the Effective Date of Contract when the reverse is actually true of the contract document.
3. The Current Completion Date, Estimated Completion Date or Last Date to Order (for IDVs) is a clear typographical error; i.e.: "2109."
4. A Blanket Purchase Agreement awarded against a General Services Administration contract lacks a Reference IDV entry.
5. The Description of Requirement field does not provide a brief description of the contractual requirements and/or only describes the instant contracting action and not the requirement.
Specific Areas of Input Requested
The Department respectfully requests input from industry partners and other parties regarding the following questions/topics:
1. Provide summary background on any existing instances of automation tools/ Robotic Process Automation (RPA) solutions in the federal space that you have deployed to support comparable data sets to improve decision-making and accountability. In particular, instances of automation tools/RPA relevant to policy-making, innovation, oversight, and learning, especially those gathering data sets from disparate systems and sources. Address implementation strategies used, challenges and impediments encountered, project timelines, and performance metrics.
2. Provide recommendations regarding our primary areas of focus (examples provided below, but feel free to expand as applicable). Also offer any overarching recommended approaches for introducing data management technologies in this space.
a. Is this area of DATA Act and FDDS-NG compliance and reporting a target-rich environment for applying RPA/BOTS/AI tools? Does the assumption that publicly available data sets are riper for automation tools hold true?
b. Are there known infrastructures/interfaces that will make this effort more difficult or easier if utilized? I.e., is a particular tool not offered in a cloud /on-prem environment?
c. What is a reasonable progression for introducing technologies under this initiative in order to manage risk and demonstrate sustainable return on investment (ROI) (e.g., initiate a non-credentialed tool across limited data elements, followed by an attended automation solution, followed by an unattended tool set across one or more data elements)?
3. Identify where a Rough Order of Magnitude (ROM) for contract cost to support this initiative would fall, with any notations for development, hosting, and operations and maintenance. Please utilize the following three dollar ranges, instead of generating a specific dollar amount:
a. $25,000-$250,000 per year;
b. $250,000-$500,000 per year; or,
c. $500,000 plus per year.
4. Provide potential ROI summary information that the Department could reasonably expect to attain with the adoption and implementation of automation in this space. Include any appropriate references to the implementation strategies presented in item 1 above.
Summary
Treasury OPE is extremely interested in available RPA and AI tools that will aid in increasing overall data accuracy while also increasing operational efficiencies and reducing personnel resources. We encourage all interested vendors to respond to this RFI and provide us with your valuable insight and expertise in supporting this critical initiative. Additionally, it is likely that the Treasury OPE will perform additional market research efforts with a subset of the industry partners who respond to this RFI.
The deadline for responses to this RFI is 5:00PM EDT, June 17, 2019. Responses should be forwarded via email to both the primary and secondary points of contact below. Responses shall not exceed 5 pages and shall not contain any brochures, advertising or any other type of extraneous, graphic literature or documents that have not been requested and are not relevant or essential in demonstrating the company's ability to provide the required services. Vendors may provide links to relevant websites, as appropriate.
Vendors shall reference "RFI_Treasury_wide_Data_Governance_and_Analytics_DGA_Initiative" in the subject line of their response as well as in the subject line of any other e-mail correspondence referencing this notice.
** THE GOVERNMENT WILL NOT RESPOND TO PHONE CALLS. **
Thank you for your interest.
Contracting Office Address:
IRS, 1111 Constitution Ave. NW
C7-NCFB
Washington, District of Columbia 20024
United States
Primary Point of Contact:
Sandra R. Anderson, Contract Specialist
sandra.r.anderson@irs.gov
Phone: 240-613-7462
Secondary Point of Contact:
Tim Shaughnessy, Program Analyst
Treasury Office of the Procurement Executive
timothy.shaughnessy@treasury.gov
Phone: 202-622-6585

Opportunity closing date

17 June 2019

Value of contract

to be confirmed