IRS Offers First Look at $2.6B Contract Touching All Its IT Systems

The IRS is building a $2.6 billion IT support contract with the potential to touch every major tax system managed by the U.S. government.

The agency released a request for information for the new Enterprise Development, Operations Services, or EDOS, contract, which will cover development of new IT systems and services, as well as ongoing operations and maintenance of existing systems.

“The IRS is seeking contractor support to provide a full range of development and associated services necessary to plan, coordinate and execute technical and management approaches in alignment with requirements and scheduling demands for the [Application Development Office’s] delivery partners and other business stakeholders,” according to the draft performance work statement.

The contract has the potential to cover every IT application—and, in turn, every service provided by the agency—including those that don’t exist yet.

“The contractor will provide services to support current tax code applications and build new processes that do not exist in tax administration today,” according to the PWS.

The PWS includes a list of current IRS IT systems the vendor will work on, including: IRS Integrated Financial System; IT Financial Management Information Systems; Customer Account Data Engine 2; IRS Integrated Enterprise Portal; IRS Public User Portal; IRS Registered User Portal; IRS Employer User Portal; Integrated Production Model; Application to Application Simple Object Access Protocol; ISR-Analytics and Reporting; XRDB Database; the Metadata Dictionary; IPM Greenplum and IPM O&M; Data as a Service; Return Review Program; the Affordable Care Act; the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act; the Health Care and Education Affordability Reconciliation Act; FATCA–Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act; Tax Check Program; and CA Delegated Authentication Service eAuthentication.

The winning contractor will be expected to meet three primary objectives, all centered on reducing costs and redundancies and improving efficiency.

In that vein, the contract is broken into two task areas: development, modernization and enhancement, and sustainment, otherwise known as operations and maintenance. The draft performance work statement goes into detail on each of nine task areas, each with its own set of deliverables, performance metrics and desired outcomes.

The contract has an anticipated ceiling of $2.6 billion, with an estimated 2.5 million labor hours per year across at least 10 job categories. IRS officials plan to make a single award off of a governmentwide acquisition contract, or GWAC, a set of contractors pre-vetted by another agency.

EDOS is set to run for a one-year base period, with four one-year add-on options. “The contractor will also have the option to earn two additional one-year option periods based on performance,” the PWS states.

The work will be spread across several states, including IRS sites in Maryland, Tennessee, Texas and Utah, as well as at the contractor’s facilities.

The RFI includes four questions for potential vendors, with a response deadline of 3 p.m. March 31.