Heather Kirk October 23, 2023 1 Comment

The Ask: Current and prospective Securities and Exchange Commission partners spent time last week evaluating and building out their responses to an active RFI out of the Division of Economic and Risk Analysis (DERA), which provides a wide range of data-driven analyses and analytics to staff across the Commission, in relation to a need for support of their Office of Structured Disclosure (OSD) Information Delivery System (OIDS) tool.  

Background 

“The Division of Economic and Risk Analysis (DERA) has five primary mission functions: 

  1. To support agency rulemaking and policy development; 
  2. To develop cutting-edge, customized risk assessment tools and models to assist SEC divisions and offices to proactively detect market risks indicative of possible violations of the Federal securities laws; 
  3. To serve as the central hub for the Commission’s approach to intake, processing, and use of data – including analytical methods and the production of market statistics; 
  4. To support the Division of Enforcement through the provision of sophisticated economic and statistical analysis to assist in investigations and litigated cases; and 
  5. To inform the public about relevant securities issues through the publication of white papers, working papers, and other research publications. 

DERA’s sophisticated analytic and data services are mission focused, comprehensive, and include: 

  • Providing detailed, high-quality economic and statistical analyses, and specific subject-matter expertise to the SEC;
  • Identifying, evaluating and recommending ways the SEC staff can use financial data, including Interactive Data, as well as providing expertise in data analysis;
  • Identifying and analyzing issues, trends, and innovations in the marketplace;
  • Developing analytical tools, approaches, methods, and models in order to identify trends, risks, or potential securities law violations in the capital markets;
  • Working with outside experts in academia and industry to strengthen the SEC’s foundation of market knowledge;
  • Analyzing and maintaining public and private financial and market data to support relevant initiatives and analytic projects;
  • Creating knowledge through high-quality research and publication in peer-reviewed journals; and
  • Participating in, and contributing to, academic and industry conferences.

The Office of Structured Disclosure (OSD) Information Delivery System (OIDS) tool provides users with access to commercial and internally-developed data sets and analytical reports created by DERA staff. The data sets cover a wide variety of areas such as regulatory registration information, mutual fund performance, hedge fund performance, and market trading data. The reports that can be accessed within this tool use multiple data sources and incorporate a variety of analytical methods. The sources of this data include commercial data feeds, self-regulatory organizations (SROs) including the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), web-based feeds, manual downloads, application programming interfaces and aggregated data vendors like Wharton Research Data Services. These data sets are downloaded into various servers and databases, including Oracle and Netezza. All of this data resides in the SEC network. 

The purpose of this project is to modernize existing reports and/or develop new reports within the recently enhanced OIDS environment, which utilizes the next version of SAS Viya. The contractor is expected to exploit the full capabilities of SAS Viya to create enhanced functionality and visualization in existing and/or new reports. Additionally, the new environment will support Python scripts. The contractor is expected to develop Python scripts that output reports containing data, analytics, and/or visuals. 

Objectives 

The primary objective of this Task Order is to provide users with improved functionality and flexibility in the updated OIDS SAS Viya environment. This project will have a primary focus on expanding report capabilities in OIDS, and testing the bounds of what can be provided to the user. The Contractor is expected to modernize existing reports and/or develop new reports, as well as update and/or create user manuals, within OIDS, which utilizes the next version of SAS Viya. These reports will be among the first developed in the new OIDS environment in ACES (the SEC version of AWS) and should provide SEC staff with on-demand capability to address emerging business needs. The Contractor would also develop additional functionality and reporting in Python. 

The Contractor shall provide particular expertise and experience in SAS, specifically version SAS Viya, and expertise with Python. The Contractor should have experience with developing reports, specifically in SAS Viya, and data visualization. The Contractor should also have experience in web development, to update and assist in modernization/enhancements in displaying SAS Viya Reports and other outputs in a web application compliant with appropriate standards (e.g. NIST, ACES, etc.). The project will encompass the updating of existing reports and/or the development of new reports, as well as update and/or create user manuals, using existing datasets and potentially new datasets available at the Commission. The Contractor will work in the new OIDS IV application in the ACES Development environment. The Contractor will be able to support storing developed code in SEC configuration management software (e.g., GitLab).” 

Pro Tip 1 – If you are a firm with capabilities and socio-economic status that might support this or any related effort, comment below and let others know you are interested. Comments are some of the most viewed portions of any post.  

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Looking for some good teaming partners that are supporting SEC today? Click Here  

You can filter the list by several key indicators, to include socio-economic status, NAICS, Contract vehicle, etc.   

16 SEC focused firms drawing the most attention on OrangeSlices AI 

** An Elev8 GovCon Honoree, noted for a corporate culture that demonstrates its own excellence, making the company a beacon for talent, for partners, and for clients.     

We cannot and will not speculate here as to the reasons for the increased interest, but whether it is a company evaluating them as a potential partner; a federal acquisition leader doing their due diligence; or a consultant weighing their next job move, this group of companies has been receiving increased interest.      

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  1. Frieda Chung

    ALT Solutions has deep and relevant SAS modeling and financial mgt. experience to support the requested services. Contact me at frieda.chung@gmail.com