IRS Draft RFQ: Enterprise Systems Testing BPA

Notice ID:  8298

The current vendor is Peraton Inc. The anticipated period of performance is a base year with five option years.

This is a DRAFT RFQ ONLY. Proposals will not be accepted at this time. This posting is for questions related to the draft RFQ documents only. All questions shall be submitted on Questions and Answers template (Attachment 7).

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Information Technology, Enterprise Services, Enterprise Systems Testing (EST), hereinafter referred to as EST, requires contractor support to perform Systems Acceptability Testing (SAT), Integration Testing, Performance Testing, and other types of testing called out in the Performance Work Statement (PWS) for this requirement, and testing-related support services including Test Automation, Test Data Management and Program Management, for a wide universe of IRS-developed tax, administrative, and financial applications and systems.

SAT, integration, performance, and other types of testing ensure applications and systems are functioning as intended, are compliant with business requirements, and free of defects prior to production implementation.  Thorough, comprehensive, and independent testing of these IRS-developed applications and systems contributes significantly and tangibly to providing the highest possible level of quality and accurate service to the taxpaying public and enhancing the overall taxpayer experience in direct support of the agency’s strategic plan.

Test Automation support facilitates the efficiency and effectiveness of testing activities by automating manual testing processes and procedures, enabling testing to be performed more rapidly, expediting review of expected results, and conserving human testing band width thereby making it possible for EST to test larger quantities of applications and systems.

The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has a long-standing commitment to rigorously testing application software prior to production deployment. Established in the 1960s, the IRS ‘Systems Acceptability Testing (SAT)’ methodology provides an independent assessment of a System’s fitness for purpose and traditionally includes elements of User Acceptance as well as white-box and black-box approaches to functional verification and validation. More recently, IRS established the ‘Final Integration Test (FIT)’ which focuses on verification and validation of requirements that span multiple systems by creating primary source inputs (triggers) and tracing them to their final outputs. The FIT is typically conducted annually prior to the beginning of the annual tax filing season and focuses on processing threads that support the Submission Processing and Customer Service business domains at IRS.

The IRS is also developing and evolving its approach to Performance Testing. The IRS expects that waterfall or incremental delivery projects will continue to be tested through these existing test methods and processes with some evolution, or continuous improvement over time. The IRS is seeking support in the planning and execution of these tests, as well as with planning for and evolving the methodologies as appropriate.

The IRS leadership is also proactively rethinking how the organization supports modern frameworks, standardization, enterprise cloud capabilities, and is seeking to use agile or iterative development methodologies for new applications.  The IRS Information Technology (IT) leaders embrace a more modern, agile pace of innovation and develop new applications using an agile method to achieve an organizational shift to a more modern technological approach to application delivery.

The IRS is seeking expertise to assist in adopting flexible agile methodology to deliver IT projects across the agency in critical areas. The IRS Enterprise Services (ES) Enterprise Systems Testing (EST) within the IT organization supports the modernization of the tax processing systems. The EST organization is responsible for and supports aspects of software life cycle management, including requirements, design, development, testing, implementation, and transition to operations, as required by the IRS business capabilities associated with the business modernization initiative resulting from the implementation of Legislation.

A significant number of complex technical and business changes will require implementation. This fast and vigorous approach to development and process engineering requires the IRS to employ the strongest and most aggressive federal workforce as well as competitive vendor resources that can lead the way in supporting requirements, design, development, testing, integration, deployment, and transition to operations of the associated systems.

The EST organization is accountable and/or responsible for ensuring all applicable tests are executed, defects are tracked, and test results are communicated to all stakeholders. The nature of testing, and its incorporation early and often requires a reconsideration of the traditional test processes as well as extensive automation of tests for functionality, performance, and accessibility.

The IRS requires contractor support to accomplish the following objectives:

1. Perform application and system testing functions and services for EST.
2. Deliver applications to production with zero defects.
3. Automate and streamline testing activities to occur earlier in delivery cycles reducing manual labor and increasing coverage.
4. Promote more efficient Test Data Management (TDM) processes to ensure application software can be validated with minimal dependency on copies of sensitive production data.
5. Help the IRS transition its current testing practices to establish and continuously improve a disciplined practice that increases delivery velocity, quality, and job satisfaction while reducing cost and risk.

The IRS requires contractor support with extensive knowledge of IRS tax administration systems processing, requirements, and timelines. The EST organization is responsible for all aspects of Functional Testing, Integration and Final Integration Testing (FIT), Performance Testing and IT Security related testing. The contractor shall have a comprehensive understanding of testing to anticipate participant behavior and to drive the test strategy/design, test case development, data creation and test execution for validating current and new applications …

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