The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is working toward meeting the Office of Management and Budget’s Frictionless Acquisition Cross-Agency Priority (CAP) goal with innovative data management through its Pilot IRS program.
The Frictionless Acquisition CAP goal is a President’s Management Agenda initiative pushing the Federal government to deliver commercial items at the same speed as the marketplace by breaking down acquisition barriers to entry. To help meet this goal, Pilot IRS is seeking “innovative tools and solutions to improve access to and visibility around disparate sets of labor and wage data.”
In an August 4 request for information (RFI), IRS explained that the government generally lacks publicly available data on the acquisition process. Creating a new database that maximizes the use of existing labor and wage data, per the RFI, would result in better acquisition planning, improved contract negotiations, and lower taxpayer costs.
“Furthermore, combining multiple data sources in a user-friendly format should allow use of this data in a ‘just-in-time’ fashion to make smarter and faster decisions,” the RFI states.
Pilot IRS is seeking a “data mashing” solution that meets three goals: bringing together multiple datasets in an easy-to-use visualization; promoting the use of labor and wage data by government personnel during acquisition processes; and achieving near-term improvements in the number of datasets and rigor of analysis.
IRS is prepared to invest $50,000 in a 120-day proof of concept, and is accepting responses to the RFI by August 17.
