IRS Needs Help Managing and Upgrading Legacy Criminal Investigations Systems
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By
Aaron Boyd
The two main IT systems that manage the tax agency’s investigations efforts are 10 and 15 years old, and users want new capabilities.
The IRS’s criminal investigations team relies heavily on two legacy IT systems that are very much in need of upgrades. The agency is looking for a contractor to manage day-to-day operations and upkeep, as well as multiple new deployments each year.
The tax agency released a request for information seeking an “experienced master level contractors support for its information technology law enforcement Management Information Systems.” The MIS includes two major IT systems: the Criminal Investigation Management Information System, or CIMIS, and the Asset Forfeiture Tracking and Retrieval, or AFTRAK, system.
CIMIS, built in 2005, “is a management tool for tracking the status and progress of IRS CI investigations, time expended by employees, employee information, and investigative equipment,” according to the draft performance work statement included with the RFI. “Data contained in CIMIS is used to respond to congressional mandates, Treasury regulations, Office of Management and Budget (OMB) requirements, and IRS directives.”
The CIMIS system is accessible only on the IRS internal network using Internet Explore/MS Edge, and is supported by a host of systems developed by Microsoft, HP, IBM, SAP and others.
The other major system, AFTRAK, was built in 2010 and is “tightly integrated with CIMIS and shares the same framework,” the PWS states.
Despite using applications developed by established vendors, “These two legacy applications contain large amounts of custom code,” officials said, with “approximately 17 new enhancement requests per year” over the last four years.
Going forward, with contractor support, the CIMIS and AFTRAK system managers hope to deliver six to eight deployments per year to begin whittling down a backlog of more than 400 open items.
The contractor will be expected to handle daily operations and maintenance of both systems, as well as manage the development and deployment lifecycle for updates and improvements.
The contract is built around eight subtasks, including: orientation briefing; knowledge transfer support; operations and maintenance; project management planning and reporting; documentation; development, modernization and enhancement; transition to support; and earned value management. The performance work statement goes into each subtask in detail, along with desired outcomes.
The RFI includes six questions for potential contractors, including experience developing and maintaining systems using the above-named apps.
IRS officials are also using the RFI to determine whether a small business—8(a), HUBZone, service-disabled veteran-owned or woman-owned—has the capacity to fulfill the contract.
The contract is set to start in September and run for one base year, with four one-year add-on options.
Responses to the RFI are due by noon Thursday.