The Internal Revenue Service will soon post a solicitation on Pilot IRS, a procurement vehicle that will be an avenue for the IRS to access technology which will improve its processes, Nextgov reported Monday. Scheduled to be issued in August, the program’s first solicitation will be regarding the automation of contract-related financial updates.
The three goals of Pilot IRS are to upgrade the data of the IRS, to put a ceiling on the work performed by government employees on data improvement projects and to be able to enhance IRS’ data in the near future, optimistically by the end of September.
“The quality of the data is inconsistent because different contracting activities use different approaches, use different systems and, frankly, as we in the IRS have experienced firsthand, the bulk of the obligations come in the fourth quarter and in September,†said Harrison Smith, deputy chief procurement officer at the IRS.
Procurement through Pilot IRS will have four phases. Projects, which require approval at the end of each stage, will cycle through a $25K proof-of-concept phase, a $75K prototyping phase, a limited deployment phase, and a $3M scaled deployment phase. The IRS intends to issue awards for the first phase by the end of fiscal year 2019. Interested parties may submit their questions until Aug. 9.