ARLINGTON, Va., May 10, 2021 /PRNewswire/ — ASI Government, LLC (ASI) announced today that the company was selected as the Department of Treasury “Small Business Prime Contractor of the Year” for 2020 and was presented the award at an Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business ceremony. ASI in partnership with subcontractor Abeyon worked to develop solutions for the Internal Revenue Service (IRS)’s Pilot IRS Program to automate manual acquisition processes.
Through the IRS’s innovative Pilot IRS program, ASI began supporting the IRS in September 2019 to create the first-ever automated internal Data Quality system to review, assess, and correct data discrepancies in real time ahead of procurement audits. The solution retrieves original contracts of interest to verify actual contract data aligned with official public procurement data (FPDS-NG) to ensure compliance with DATA ACT requirements. IRS tested ASI’s solution through an incremental phased approach and ASI’s solution remains in operation today. The solution approach consists of an agile integration approach using Artificial Intelligence (AI), Natural Language Processing (NLP), and Machine Learning (ML) technologies combined with Robotic Process Automation (RPA). ASI’s deep and broad knowledge of acquisition and procurement processes and data were brought to bear to provide supervised learning of the algorithms developed to accomplish the use cases for IRS Procurement.
In making the award, Treasury officials cited the legislative federal requirement to meet a rapidly approaching deadline to include telecommunications security language in certain federal contracts to assure the integrity of its information technology. The IRS estimated it would take two hours to complete this modification for a single contract, including the steps of manually creating one modification, inputting data into FPDS-NG, and uploading the modification into the contract file repository. To complete the modifications for all 1,466 active contracts meeting specific criteria, the IRS estimated they would require about 2,860 hours of manual processing time, the equivalent of 1.5 work-years. Faced with a surge in procurement demands in the 4th quarter of the fiscal year, IRS did not have the time or people power to complete this mandate timely.
Taking a risk on a disruptive technology, Shanna Webbers, the IRS Chief Procurement Officer, asked her team to engage ASI to develop a prototype for how to automate this modification. ASI’s solution resulted in a total process time of just 72 hours to complete 1,466 contract modifications instead of the expected 1.5 work-years of manual effort! Per transaction, the automated processing time took on average a mere 3 minutes to complete–creating the modification in one second, inputting data in FPDS-NG in less than one second and uploading the modification into the contract file repository in three minutes. The automation also emailed the modification to each vendor, maintained a record for audit purposes, and eliminated data errors, reducing the administrative burden on the Contracting Officer (CO) and Contracting Officer Representative (COR).
Ms. Webbers said, “This is also a great example of how driving innovation and managing risk can make processes more efficient and get the job done.” (Working to Change IRS Acquisition Culture from Risk Avoidance to Innovation, Speed and Agility.About IRS, A Closer Look)
ASI’s CEO, Tim Cooke, said, “The ASI Team is humbled and inspired by our selection as Small Business Prime Contractor of the Year for our work supporting IRS and Treasury. We are enthusiastic about our advancing capability to create labor-saving efficiencies and improved business processes and outcomes for federal procurement and grants organizations.”
About ASI Government LLC
For more than 25 years, federal civilian, defense, homeland security and intelligence community program and procurement organizations have relied on ASI Government LLC as a pioneer and gold-standard partner in cost-effectively delivering successful approaches and enabling services for complex, high-value, high-risk acquisitions that increase government’s capability, performance and service to the American people. For more information, please contact: Mark Attwa, EVP/CFO at [email protected] or 703-253-6355.
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SOURCE ASI Government
