The Internal Revenue Service has built a predictive model-based online application that seeks to provide an immediate answer to the question “when will a contract be signed?”
The Projected Contract Award Date app uses an algorithm designed to estimate the number of days before a contract is awarded in the agency’s Integrated Financial System-Procurement for the Public Sector, the IRS said.
The interactive platform is a result of collaborative research work by the IRS Office of the Chief Procurement Officer and Fairfax, Virginia-based information technology consulting firm Data and Analytic Solutions.
“This effort is a new trend in contract management that adjusts our business processes based on timing factors in the government contracting process, using cutting-edge data science technologies,” said Shanna Webbers, IRS chief procurement officer.
The web app also allows the IRS, which allocates as much as $2.5 billion in contract funds annually, to modify standards and reevaluate requirements including the solicitation method, competition and classification of goods or services.
The agency said its forecasting tool has potential application to other federal organizations that want to gain insight about when a procurement request will transition to the contract signing phase.