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Social Media Vendor Supplied Research Request for Information

Section: Sources Sought Notice

R - Professional, administrative, and management support services

R -- Electronic Research Services

Office Address:

Department of the Treasury

Internal Revenue Service (IRS)

National Office Procurement (OS:A:P)

1111 Constitution Ave NW, C7-NCFB

Washington, DC 20224-0002

Classification Code: R - Professional, administrative, and management support services

Solicitation Number: 2032H8-RFI MEDIA

Contact:

 Evinnia Lenick, Senior Program Analyst, phone: 949-230-7968, email:


Evinnia.N.Lenick@irs.gov.
 Kelvin Bogan, Contract Specialist, phone: 240-613-9353, email: Kelvin.Bogan@irs.gov.

INTRODUCTION:

THIS IS A REQUEST FOR INFORMATION (RFI) ONLY. This RFI is issued solely for
information and planning purposes – it does not constitute a Request for Proposal (RFP) or a
promise to issue an RFP in the future. This request for information does not commit the
Government to contract for any supply or service whatsoever. Further, the IRS is not seeking
proposals at this time and will not accept unsolicited proposals. Responders are advised that
the U.S. Government will not pay for any information or administrative costs incurred in
response to this RFI; all costs associated with responding to this RFI will be solely at the
interested party’s expense. Not responding to this RFI does not preclude participation in any
future RFP, if any is issued.

The purpose of this RFI is to gather market research, confirm the Independent Government
Cost Estimate (IGCE), implementation timeline, and available venders.

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Social Media Vendor Supplied Research Request for Information

Description

This is a Request for Information (RFI) and product demonstration only. This is not a Request
for Proposal and is not a Government commitment to issue a solicitation or award a contract.
Responses to this request do not serve as proposals, bids, or offers that the Government might
accept as a binding contract. Responses will assist the Government in its market research to
determine whether, according to applicable law, to set-aside, restrict competition, or solicit offers
from all responsible sources. For the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to assess set-asides,
interested parties should identify their company as one of the following: small business, 8(a),
HUBZone small business, small disadvantaged business, woman-owned business, veteran-
owned small business, service disabled veteran-owned small business, or large business.

The IRS Office of the Chief Procurement Officer appreciates the importance of productive
relationships with our industry partners, relationships that help the Office accomplish its mission.
The cornerstone of this alliance rests in transparency and opportunities for open
communication.

This RFI has three main purposes: 1) to provide background information regarding the IRS’s
mission and the tax processes; 2) to provide background information on the state of IRS social
media research capabilities; and 3) to request input from the industry on available research
tools in the marketplace. This last part will be done by asking vendors to respond to a series of
questions about the IRS’s priorities and business requirements.

This RFI is the first request for information or tools available in the marketplace. The IRS
requests responses to this RFI be provided no later than 9:00 A.M. EST on January 18,
2019 by an e-mail (with the subject line “Social Media Vendor Supplied Research RFI
Response”) to the procurement email inbox Kelvin.Bogan@irs.gov. Although there are
no specific restrictions for formatting, please keep all responses to ten pages or less,
adhere to general formatting principles, and ensure that responses are legible.
Responders should be aware that there is no guarantee the IRS will have funding or
issue a solicitation generated from this RFI, nor will the IRS be responsible for
reimbursing a vendor’s costs in responding to this RFI. RFI response for questions and
answers will be summarized and posted to www.FBO.gov no later than January 08, 2019

In addition, during this pre-procurement phase and as part of market research, the IRS
would like interested electronic research vendors to demonstrate their products during
the week of January 28, 2019. Vendors must do this by a web-conferencing tool such as
WebEx, Saba Meeting, ClearSlide, or GotoMeeting. Prior to the demonstration, vendors
should reach out to the Contracting Officer and Point of Contact specified above, to
ensure IRS attendees can access the vendor’s web-conferencing tool.

Vendors will have a 60-minute time frame to show their product(s). There will be an IRS
Question & Answer period following each demonstration. All interested parties must
contact Kelvin Bogan (phone 240-613-9353, email Kelvin.Bogan@irs.gov) or Evinnia
Lenick (phone 949-230-7968, email Evinnia.N.Lenick@irs.gov) to schedule an
appointment and inform the IRS of any special presentation needs so that appropriate
accommodations can be made.

Background on the IRS Mission, Definitions, and Tax Processes

The IRS collects the revenue to fund the government and administers the nation’s tax laws. The
IRS receives revenue from a variety of taxes, including individual and business income, estate

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Social Media Vendor Supplied Research Request for Information

and gift, employment, and excise taxes. The IRS also routinely interacts with small and large
businesses, partnerships, domestic and foreign financial institutions, governmental
organizations (including Federal, state, and foreign entities), Indian Tribal governments, and tax-
exempt entities (such as charitable organizations, foundations, universities, and trusts), as well
as a wide spectrum of intermediaries and professionals who support effective tax administration,
including payment and payroll service providers, enrolled agents, Certified Public Accountants,
and return preparers. The IRS employs over 75,000 employees in nearly 500 locations.

In recent years the IRS has made several changes to modernize and improve tax processing
systems, to increase electronic filing and payment options, and to expand services on IRS.gov
for taxpayers and tax professionals. As the needs of taxpayers, the tax community, and the
nation continue to rapidly evolve, the IRS needs to consider modern technological tools to
conduct business and complete the research necessary to administer effective tax compliance.
The IRS seeks to modernize its online research tools for effective administration of tax laws.
This modernization will benefit both the IRS and the public. The IRS recognizes it must resolve
cases in the most expeditious way possible, so it can meet the needs of taxpayers, the tax
community, and its employees in an efficient and effective manner.

Current State
IRM Policy 11.3.21.8.1 outlines IRS policy regarding its employees’ use of internet based social
media research. It is largely prohibitive. For work purposes, the IRS generally bars most
employees from logging into any social media site with a user ID and password. This means
employees typically may not use personal social media accounts for work, and they may not
create government or fictitious social media accounts to carry out compliance-related work. See
IRM 11.3.21.8.1(4). In addition, IRS cybersecurity limits employees’ ability to view or access
publicly available information on social media sites.

Businesses and individuals increasingly use social media to advertise, promote, and sell
products and services. For example, taxpayers can create "online stores" on social networking
sites free of cost. Much of this information is unrestricted, allowing the public, businesses and
various governmental agencies to discover taxpayers’ locations and income sources.

But the IRS currently has no formal tool to access this public information, compile social media
feeds, or search multiple social media sites. The IRS’s hope is that a vendor-supplied tool would
help expedite IRS case resolution for existing compliance cases, providing a more efficient way
of identifying resources and assisting with the collection of known tax deficiencies, leading to
increased collection of revenue involving unfiled tax returns and other tax liabilities.

The IRS emphasizes that this tool, if the agency decides to pursue the use of it, would be done
to assist with previously identified tax compliance cases. The IRS respects taxpayer rights, and
such a tool would not be used to search the internet or social media sites for purposes of
identifying or initiating new tax audits. The IRS believes responsibly using publicly accessible
information on the internet or social media sites can assist with previously identified tax cases.
In addition, the IRS believes the tool can help it resolve troublesome instances related to tax-
related identity theft, helping quickly identify honest taxpayers who have been victimized by
identity thieves.

In addition to respecting taxpayer rights, the IRS will also be mindful that frequently information
posted on social media and the internet may be wrong or misleading.

Proposed Future Course

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Social Media Vendor Supplied Research Request for Information

The IRS is determining the best for way for employees, specifically those who work in tax
compliance, to responsibly compile case reports using public facing social media data.
The IRS wants to determine whether the available data would assist the IRS. This RFI seeks to
determine the tools that are now available in the market place, tools that will provide the most
accurate, current, and complete information. Information retrieved through vendor searches
would be used only for legitimate purposes, i.e. for existing cases or for planning areas to audit.
A vendor supplied tool will assist the IRS to comply with IRM 11.3.21.8.1. The IRS emphasizes
this internal provision prohibits fictitious “friending,” “liking,” and “following” a person or business.
The IRS is seeking a tool that can collect data that is routinely available to the public and private
sectors, as well as to other government agencies, for public information.
It is crucial that the IRS has a way to access widely available information offered on commonly
used platforms, such as social media sites, to conduct its activities in a modern and efficient
manner. Social media is an ever-evolving technological advancement, and the IRS should use
it to enhance taxpayer service and compliance. For example, use of such a tool will help to
verify instances of taxpayer-reported identity theft and to enhance our ability to help taxpayers,
including removing subsequent erroneous audit assessments.

Vendor policy must adhere to TBOR-II, non-disclosure requirements, and all applicable IRS
mission statements.

Desired Capabilities of a Social Media Research Vendor Account

While far from a comprehensive list, below are some features the IRS considers high-priority for
any potential product.

Vendor Requirements:

 Provide a product that has security measures necessary to protect the confidentiality of
taxpayers’ returns and return information, as provided under Internal Revenue Code
section 6103.
 Provide the IRS with comprehensive and unbiased search results, simply formatted and
easily translatable.
 Provide a product that is streamlined, professional, and easy to read and interpret for all
users, from low level employees to upper management.
 Provide a product that is easily explainable in court.
 Provide information that is easy to search, download, and archive, as well as the ability
to access historical “data-mined” information.
 Provide real time, customizable reports of publicly available social media information
(provided or advertised by businesses), such as new products, current sales, and new
locations.
 Provide business entity and officer information.
 Provide individual/business income sources.
 Provide public facing data regarding liens, bankruptcies, and employment.
 Provide professional/business licenses and business affiliations.
 Provide access for at least 25,000 concurrent users.
 Provide a product that is user friendly, has a quick training curve, and is cost-effective.
 Provide updates and patches as published and platform updates as new sites evolve.
 Provide customer service for end users, including vendor supplied training and end user
support tools.

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Social Media Vendor Supplied Research Request for Information

 Provide a product that is 508 compliant.


 Provide a product that meets current NIST/FIPS security requirements.
 Provide publicly available information of taxpayers’ past or present locations l.
 Provide reports showing that a taxpayer participated in an online chat room, blog, or
forum, and reports showing the chat room or blog conversation threads.
 Provide available bio-metric data, such as photos, current address, or changes to marital
status.
 Provide a product that tracks, and records searches, retains a records audit trail, and
retains all records for a specific retention period similar to existing locator services tools.
 Enter non-disclosure agreements for IRS and taxpayer security.
 Provide timely notification of outages.
 Deliver an availability rate of 99.9% during scheduled working hours (6:00 A.M. to 10
P.M. EST).
 Provide the ability to search, download, and archive current information and access
historical “data-mined” information from social media sites (e.g., cached, deleted, and
archived pages).
 Collect and organize links to, or summaries of, publicly available media content such as
videos and pictures posted by individuals and entities on social media websites and
applications.
 Collect and organize publicly posted communications between individuals and entities
on social media sites and applications, such as blogs, conversation feeds, and
comments.
 Collect and organize links to, or summaries of, all social media and social networking
sites used by a specific individual or entity.
 Summarize the social media sites where a specific individual or entity has posted
location and background information.
 Summarize the social media sites on which a specific individual or entity has discussed
or advertised business-related information, such as entity and officer information,
domestic and international financial, business, banking, or professional activities, as well
as information about professional/business licenses and affiliations.
 Summarize the social media sites on which an individual or entity has created a user
profile or “handle.”
 Summarize the social media sites that an individual or entity has used as a business,
service, or product marketing tool.

Vendors Must Also Address:

 How is the data collected, web-crawled, and data-mined? How are reports stored? Are
reports customizable?
 What is the vendor’s data-breach strategy?
 In the event of a breach, is there a deadline to publicly acknowledge the breach and
remedy for affected individuals?
 Is there cost-benefit analysis showing product effectiveness, and are there examples of
current customers’ applications?
 What type of verification will be required for access to the program? Will it have a
standard login-strong password?
 Are vendors able to supply demonstrations of their products?
 Will the product assist the IRS in using the information gathered in a responsible manner
that respects taxpayer rights?

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Social Media Vendor Supplied Research Request for Information

Questions and Requests for Industry Input

As outlined above, the IRS has several guiding principles and priorities for its social media
research product. The product must be able to function within these guidelines.

In your responses to the questions and information sought below, remember that the IRS is not
looking for a particular type of company or product. This RFI is not a source sought notice
designed to confirm that there are a sufficient number of capable small businesses, or to
confirm that there are multiple platinum certified resellers of a software application. The IRS
has attempted to provide as much flexibility as possible for vendors to respond to these
questions and to explore all options for the services. Unless noted, the IRS expects responses
to each question or request to be a short paragraph (less than ten sentences).

General Information

1. Company Overview
a. A brief description of your company, including size and overarching value proposition
(i.e., products provider, value-added reseller, hardware, etc.).
b. Company capabilities, including ability to quickly ramp up the product.
c. A listing of government and commercial clients with business needs like the IRS’s,
including telephone/e-mail contact information.
d. Best practices for using your product and getting the best results for each inquiry.

2. Based on the information provided in this RFI, what are the major opportunities, risks, and
other factors that significantly impact cost and risk (from an industry perspective)?

3. Do the RFI requirements sufficiently explain the needs of the IRS? Please include any
recommendations for additional requirements.

4. How does your company provide products? Do you provide a straight product, customer
support help, ongoing customer and help-desk support, perpetual or term licenses, cloud, or
on premise? (The IRS expects that some responses to this question will be longer than a
short paragraph.)

5. Please provide any questions your company has regarding this RFI or your product for the
IRS.

Technical Capabilities

Question Yes No
A) Does your product generate ready-made or canned reports?
Can report requests be customized? Please provide details.
Remarks:

B) Does your product provide reports that can be saved in multiple


file types (such as doc/docx, ppt/pptx, xls/xlsx, txt, csv, rtf, pdf,
email)? Can reports be imported into other files? Please list in
the Remarks the file types your product does not support.
Please provide details.

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Social Media Vendor Supplied Research Request for Information

Remarks:

C) Does your product support a large user base, such as up to


25,000 concurrent users? Describe the size of your largest
customer base, including the number of concurrent users.
Please provide details.
Remarks:

D) Does your product support simultaneous transactions of all


users across the platform? Describe any limitations on the
number of simultaneous transactions supported. Please
provide details.
Remarks:

Data Management
Question Yes No
A) What is your product’s limit for records with no degradation in
performance? Describe the practical limit on the size of the data
repository. Please provide details.
Remarks:

B) Does your product secure data at rest using FIPS 140


cryptography as certified by NIST? Please provide details.
Remarks:

C) Does your product secure data in transit using FIPS 140


cryptography as certified by NIST? Please provide details.
Remarks:

D) Does your product support different database types? Describe


the types of databases supported (e.g. DB2, Oracle, NoSQL,
Graph, etc.). Please provide details.
Remarks:

E) Does your product ensure data integrity and what is the records
retention policy? Please provide details.
Remarks:

User and Security Management

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Social Media Vendor Supplied Research Request for Information

Question Yes No
A) How are audit trails maintained? Who reviews the audit trails, if
anyone? Are records available to the IRS upon request in the
event of an investigation being necessary? Please provide
details.
Remarks:

B) Does your product facilitate flexible and secure configurations


for user management (addressing both operational and
administrative users) and for controlling user access to data?
Does your product allow for configuration of each of the
following? Please provide details.
a. Hierarchical group structures
b. Assignment of permissions by individual user, user
group, and role
c. User assignment to multiple groups or roles
d. Role-based access control
e. Attribute-based access control
f. Traceability and accountability of
transactions/operations to individual users
g. Inherited permissions
h. Delegated permissions
i. Enforcement of least privilege
j. Enforcement of separation of roles
k. System, page, and element-level control
Remarks:

C) Does your product support single sign-on using Personal


Identity Validation (PIV) with FIPS 201 compliant smart IDs?
Please provide details.
Remarks:

Implementation and Infrastructure

A) Describe the required operating environment for your product, addressing supported
or required operating systems, application servers, database types, database
connectors, communications protocols (e.g., IPv6), and web browsers. Provide
compatibility and version numbers as applicable.

Category Product Version # Compatible


Versions

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Social Media Vendor Supplied Research Request for Information

Question Yes No
B) Are there multiple approaches for your product? Describe how
your product is delivered and how reports are stored (e.g.
cloud, software as a service (SaaS), platform as a service
(PaaS), other). If your product has the option for cloud-based
implementation, describe if you are FedRAMP certified, or
certified through any other third party. Please provide details.
Remarks:

C) Are report request histories kept that allow the user to go back
and review reports without inputting additional inquiries? What,
if any, is the history retention for the end user? What is the
history retention for the overall product? Please provide details.
Remarks:

D) Does your product use native API, or other industry standards-


based methods (Java, SOAP, RESTful, XML, HTTPS, SFTP,
XSLT, etc.) to interact with legacy content and external
systems? Describe the methods, protocols, and API
management tools used. Please provide details.
Remarks:

E) Are version updates and upgrades included automatically?


How do version updates occur and are updates transparent to
the end user? Please provide details.
Remarks:

F) How does your product show conformance with Section 508


and WCAG 2AA standards in the following areas? 1) Navigation
2) Operational Controls 3) Readability 4) Help (if applicable). Is
all user and training documentation accessible? Please provide
details.
Remarks:

G) Is your out-of-the-box product an end-to-end case management


product requiring no customization? Please provide details.
Remarks:

H) Do you offer support (IT, End User, Password Mgmt. etc.) for
your product? Please provide details.
Remarks:

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Social Media Vendor Supplied Research Request for Information

I)Describe your licensing methodology (e.g. named user, concurrent user, CPU-
based, total users). Is your product a one person, one license product or a multi-
user per licenses product? How do you license for disaster recovery, alternate site
production, virtualization, high availability? Will you entertain deviations to your
standard license methodology? Please provide details.
Remarks:

SUMMARY

THIS IS A REQUEST FOR INFORMATION (RFI) ONLY to identify sources that can provide
medical services across the United States and Puerto Rico. The information provided in
the RFI is subject to change and is not binding on the Government. The IRS has not
made a commitment to procure any of the items discussed, and release of this RFI
should not be construed as such a commitment or as authorization to incur cost for
which reimbursement would be required or sought. All submissions become
Government property and will not be returned.

Any document submitted in response to this RFI that contains confidential information
must be marked on the outside as containing confidential information. Each page upon
which confidential information appears must be marked as containing confidential
information. The confidential information must be clearly identifiable to the reader
wherever it appears. All other information will not be treated as confidential.

All information marked confidential in RFI responses is only for the government’s
planning use. Otherwise, no information marked confidential included in this document
or in conversations connected to it may be disclosed to any other party outside of the
government.

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