Active

Contract Opportunity

This is a Sources Sought Notice (SSN) for market research purposes only. This SSN is issued solely for information and planning purposes – it does not constitute a Request for Quote (RFQ) or a promise to issue an RFQ in the future. This SSN does not commit the IRS to contract for any supply or service. Further, the agency is not at this time seeking quotes and will not accept unsolicited quotes. This SSN is being published to identify potential sources capable of providing support services for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Business Requirement Systems Integration (BRSI) for the Computer Assisted Publishing System (CAPS).

Responders are advised that the agency will not pay for any information or administrative costs incurred in response to this SSN; all costs associated with responding to this SSN will be solely at the interested party’s expense. Not responding to this SSN does not preclude participation in any future RFQ, if any is issued. It is the responsibility of the potential offerors to monitor the agency sources for additional information.

Background

The IRS, Office of Business Requirement Systems Integration (BRSI), is to provide planning and distribution services for all IRS print and electronic communications products used by the public to comply with tax filing requirements and obligations and used internally within IRS for tax administration. BRSI provides knowledge services and systems management support for all publishing and distribution programs, enabling the highest quality products and services to be made available using all print, electronic, and accessible media, and technology available.

The anticipated requirement encompasses Contractor support to provide operations and maintenance enhancement and development support for the Computer Assisted Publishing System (CAPS). CAPS applications fall into three primary categories according to the area(s) of the M&P business they serve:

1. Content development – includes applications for eXtensible Markup Language (XML) authoring of IRS published products, generation of hypertext links within and between products, revision storage and management, workflow management and page composition.


2. Publishing – includes applications for management of IRS published product catalog information, printing/publishing job tracking, revision storage and management, workflow management, electronic publishing to IRS.gov and page composition.


3. Distribution – includes database-intensive applications which support a variety of distribution programs.

There is significant crossover between these three categories. Some CAPS applications are used throughout the production lifecycle from initial content development through distribution.

Each CAPS application is a product of the technical era in which it was developed, relying on then current platform(s), language(s) and software development methodology. Some key applications are hosted on an International Business Machine (IBM) mainframe running the Virtual Machine mainframe (z/VM) operating system and using an IBM database structure (DB2) database structure. Current development employs a multi-tier approach using Linux-hosted Java Beans Open-Source Software (JBOSS) application servers, Oracle databases and code written primarily in the programming language developed at Sun Microsystems (JAVA).

Throughout CAPS, the need exists for applications new and old to share key data elements and communicate with one another, so the sub-tasks are not distinct, stand-alone entities, but require full awareness of each other. This rich mixture of technologies contributes to the complexity of the work. The current emphasis is a gradual migration of legacy applications to use modern technologies incorporating proven integration and design techniques in accordance with the IRS enterprise architecture. This will provide more responsive and cost-effective service to the user community. Immediate emphasis is being focused on e-business, web-enabled, and desktop applications to expand and modernize the current production applications.

CAPS interfaces with Enterprise Logistics Information Technology (ELITE) in the ordering and distribution of IRS published products for and to the taxpaying public and internal IRS offices. ELITE provides on-line order entry, order processing, warehouse management, inventory control, and shipping and receiving processes for and within the National Distribution Center (NDC) in Bloomington, IL.

The anticipated requirement will be issued for a Base Year plus four one-year Options.

Objective

No decision has yet been finalized regarding the small business strategy for this acquisition. The purpose of this SSN is to identify interested vendors with capabilities to meet all the Government requirements at a fair market price. The agency anticipates awarding a Contract/Order to obtain contractor support services for support services to provide operations and maintenance enhancement and development support for the Computer Assisted Publishing System (CAPS).

The agency anticipates that it will issue an RFQ in the third Quarter of FY24. Vendors’ SSN responses shall be sent to Contract Specialist, Gregory D. Minor, at gregory.d.minor@irs.gov on or before 11 March 2024, 4PM Central Time Zone. The agency is not seeking marketing information and will not review it.

Submission Instructions

The North American Industry Classification Systems (NAICS) Code proposed for the requirement is 541512 with a size standard of $34M.

The Government requests that all interested parties submit the information outlined below.

1. Contractor Name


2. Address


3. Point of Contact (POC)


4. POC phone number and e-mail address


5. DUNS number and CAGE


6. Brief description of the company's business size (i.e., annual gross revenue for the prior three (3) years) to include all Small Business information (if applicable)


7. Anticipated teaming or subcontracting arrangements (delineate between work accomplished by prime and work accomplished by teaming partners)


8. No more than three (3) corporate experiences in similar size, scope and complexity to the enclosed draft Performance Work Statement (PWS) shall be submitted. The corporate experience shall demonstrate the company’s experience in completing the tasks as stated in Section 3 of the draft PWS included in this announcement. Contractors shall include the contract number, funded dollar value(s), period of performance, relevant scope summary, and experience as it pertains to the tasks within the draft PWS. The corporate experience provide shall not exceed 2 pages per example.


9. Include responses to the following, please provide a yes or no:
   
   
   
   1. Will your company sub-contract out a portion of the requirement?
   
   
   2. Will your company sub-contract out more that 50% of the requirement?
   
   
   3. Does your company have similar or previous experience with the type of work describe within the PWS?
   
   
   4. Does your company have experience using Agile methodology in application?
   
   
   5. Does your company have experience using multilingual publishing?
   
   
   6. Does your company have experience using XSLT (composition software – i.e., Antenna House)?
   
   
   7. Do you have expertise converting MS Excel Files into XML?
   
   
   
   


10. Page limit and formatting requirements: The company's standard format is acceptable; however, the limit for all responses shall be seven (7), 11 font size, 8 ½ x 11-inch pages.

If you have any questions, please contact Gregory D. Minor at gregory.d.minor@irs.gov.

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