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FBO DAILY - FEDBIZOPPS ISSUE OF AUGUST 27, 2017 FBO #5756
DOCUMENT

R -- Artificial Intelligence (AI) for OEI - Attachment

Notice Date

8/25/2017
 

Notice Type

Attachment
 

NAICS

541611 — Administrative Management and General Management Consulting Services
 

Contracting Office

Strategic Acquisition Center - Frederick;Department of Veterans Affairs;321 Ballenger Center Drive, Suite 125;Frederick MD 21703
 

ZIP Code

21703
 

Solicitation Number

VA119A17N0411
 

Response Due

12/1/2017
 

Archive Date

1/30/2018
 

Point of Contact

Melissa.Maloy@va.gov
 

E-Mail Address

Melissa.Maloy@va.gov
(Melissa.Maloy@va.gov)
 

Small Business Set-Aside

N/A
 

Description

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is issuing this Request for Information (RFI) in accordance with FAR 15.201(e). The agency does not intend to award a contract but rather gather capabilities and market information pertinent for acquisition planning. The responses to this RFI will contribute to determining the method of procurement and identify parties having an interest in and the resources to support this requirement. DESCRIPTION OF REQUIREMENT The Office of Enterprise Integration (OEI) occupies a central role in supporting the Secretary s Transformational goals through performance management and continuous performance improvement. These functions include direct management and comprehensive research of programs and activities critical to the VA mission, as well as direct support of VA Central Office (VACO) clients. At the center of VA s transformational effort is a commitment to creating an agile, learning culture of continuous performance improvement. VA is considering leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI) as an emergent technology to improve VA services to Veterans and their families and improve efficiencies in our operations. AI can analyze vast amounts of data and provide OEI with operational decision support, identify data discrepancies, provide a "digital expert opinion" in group decisions, assign categories and groups to subsets of data for collaboration, employ best practices, and apply "institutional" knowledge of operations. The Office of Policy and Interagency Collaboration (OPIC) within OEI is considering AI for two operations: The Portfolio of Veterans Benefits Project (PVB), and Directives Management. The Portfolio of Veterans Benefits is a project that delivers on the OPIC priority to develop and execute a plan to research and document the benefits and services available to Veterans at the Federal and State levels to include eligibility criteria. The purpose of this project is to create a product that provides a comprehensive view of benefits and services that Veterans and other stakeholders can leverage. Further, the product is intended to be easy to understand, and indicate possible redundancies in benefits and how those benefits may interact. OPIC's Policy Service is leading an initiative to transform VA directives management. VA directives management defines the means by which policies, procedures, requirements, and other information of general applicability are issued within VA. VA also issues handbooks that explain how to meet the intended purpose of their associated directive. VA directives policy and responsibilities are codified in VA Directive 6330. As of this publication, there are over 500 policy documents on the VA Intranet, and they represent a broad spectrum of business activities. As new legislation is promulgated, OPIC needs to decompose that legislation and distribute the relevant components to the implementing organizations within VA. These actions need to be tracked and reported. This very complex process can be managed using AI technology, which is well suited to this type of business challenge. Ambiguous policies and inconsistent processes were primary findings and contributors to VA's placement on the High-Risk List by the General Accounting Office (GAO-15-290). VA is working to improve VA directives management policies, processes, and capabilities. The Government is looking for information and capability statements to provide support to OEI in the task areas listed below: Implementation of an AI system for two OEI functions: 1) Performance Improvement (PI) of the OEI Portfolio of Veterans Benefits (PVB) Project; and 2) OEI business line of directives management Implementation of data transaction interfaces and user interfaces for these functions Development and rollout of a Customer Support Model Establishment of OEI Management and Stewardship of the AI SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS THERE IS NO SOLICITATION AT THIS TIME. This RFI does not constitute a request for proposals. Submission of any information in response to this RFI is purely voluntary. The Government assumes no financial responsibility for any costs incurred. If your organization has the potential capacity to perform these contract services, please respond to this RFI as follows Cover Sheet 1 page Please provide the following information: 1. Organization name, address, and web site. 2. Point of contact to include e-mail address and telephone number. 3. Business size (large or small). If small, please provide type of small business. 4. North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) that best fits these task areas. 5. If applicable, GSA contract number, schedule, and SIN category. Index 1 page Please provide an index to assist the Government in identifying where you have addressed each question below in your Capabilities Statement and Market Information. Please provide question number and corresponding page and section heading and/or paragraph number. Capabilities Statement and Market Information Please respond to the following questions by providing a capabilities statement and market information. Portfolio of Veterans Benefits How can the AI help OEI research and document a comprehensive portfolio of Veteran-related benefits and services at the Federal and State levels, including eligibility criteria for those benefits and services? How can the AI identify unintended interactions among benefits programs, such as engaging a certain set of benefits causing a net income loss unintended by policy, regulation or law, and help remediate those interactions? How can an AI support executive decisions on Federal and State benefits and their interactions? How can the AI help develop, transact, and manage a data exchange agreement between the PVB and the National Resource Directory (https://www.nrd.gov)? How can the AI discover relationships among the dataset and the data available to it from similar external datasets it identifies (e.g., the National Resource Directory or MyArmyBenefits websites)? How can the AI apply the data from the PVB to create or improve direct interactions with citizens to support their own benefit decisions? How can the AI help define, promote, assure, and maintain specific data governance agreements with local administrators of discrete subsets of benefits data (e.g., State VA officers)? How can the AI discover characterizations of different forms of Military Service on benefits, e.g., Active Duty vs. Reserve Component or National Guard? How can the AI identify effects of State Residency on benefits for specific use case profiles (e.g., disability rating percentages, characterization of service)? How can the AI improve the criteria for assigning benefits types (e.g., financial vs. educational)? How can the AI make a distinction between entitlement programs versus programs that have a spending cap (e.g., state grant programs)? Directives Management How can the AI help OEI review new legislation for impact on VA directives and other VA policies, recommend changes to those directives and policies, decompose and distribute that legislation to the implementing organizations within VA, and track and report their actions? How can the AI verify that new legislative mandates for VA policy are not addressed in any existing directive or handbook? How can the AI manage the content and relationship of a directive with its associated handbook, so that both documents change state in a coordinated manner, and the handbook accurately prescribes the procedural or operational requirements of the directive? How can the AI help reconcile disputes involving the content or authority to issue a directive? How can the AI identify unintended interactions among directives, such as sets of directives that contradict or redundantly direct actions, intent, purpose, or authority, and help remediate those interactions? How can the AI help develop, update, and reengineer VA directives management policy and standard operating procedure, including identifying the need for these changes, and support an oversight mechanism for monitoring and enforcement? How can the AI help update VA Directive 6330 (https://www.va.gov/vapubs/viewPublication.asp?Pub_ID=430&FType=2) and VA Handbook 6330 (https://www.va.gov/vapubs/viewPublication.asp?Pub_ID=41&FType=2)? How can the AI help identify when the authority for a directive needs to change, or the authority for a new directive? How can the AI help inform decisions about rescission, such as when legislation or planned expiration renders a directive obsolete, or when to include expiration provisions in directives? How can the AI support revisions to the strategic communications plan for directives? How can the AI help define the approach for prioritization and recertification of outdated directives? How can the AI manage the superordinate authority that VA directives have over directives from the VA administrations or staff offices, so that directives from subordinate organizations enhance or enable compliance with directives from their superordinate organization? What advantages would the AI provide over text mining systems, such as SAS Text Miner or IBM SPSS Statistics? What advantages would the AI provide over conventional search engine algorithms, such as Google PageRank or Bing? General Questions How can the AI help OEI, the Office of Veterans Experience, Insights and Design team, and the VA Center for Innovation put Human-Centered Design (HCD) at the forefront of their organizations activities, run HCD pilots, and develop a nationwide network of HCD experts? How can the AI connect to business intelligence software like Tableau or Microsoft Power BI? What measurements would the AI provide to demonstrate pre-and post-implementation capabilities and value? How can AI support and improve the portfolio management workflows and the reporting of how instances of the workflows move to different states? How can the AI infer attributes of benefits, directives or stakeholders using unstructured, ambiguous or imprecise information? How can the AI user interface help users adapt to using AI as a "digital employee" on a team that manages a portfolio of benefits or directives? What non-VA data and queries would an AI use to support the portfolio management decisions it recommends? How can the AI format its questions about its discoveries in a way that minimizes the work required for human operators to transmit an e-mail to stakeholders who can answer them? How can the AI help review best practices, policies, and procedures from other Federal agencies related to management of benefits and directives? How can the AI help public users interact with the VA to determine what directive or benefit relates to their needs? What information can the AI provide concerning the rationale behind the discoveries the AI makes about the data (e.g., correlations, deviations from predictions)? Structure of Responses Contractors should respond to this RFI by December 1, 2017, 4PM ET via e-mail to Basil.White@va.gov and Melissa.Maloy@va.gov. Limit all responses to 20 pages.
 

Web Link

FBO.gov Permalink
(https://www.fbo.gov/spg/VA/AFMLOVASS/VASSMD/VA119A17N0411/listing.html)
 

Document(s)

Attachment
 

File Name: VA119A-17-N-0411 VA119A-17-N-0411.docx (https://www.vendorportal.ecms.va.gov/FBODocumentServer/DocumentServer.aspx?DocumentId=3757201&FileName=VA119A-17-N-0411-000.docx)

Link: https://www.vendorportal.ecms.va.gov/FBODocumentServer/DocumentServer.aspx?DocumentId=3757201&FileName=VA119A-17-N-0411-000.docx

 

Note: If links are broken, refer to Point of Contact above or contact the FBO Help Desk at 877-472-3779.
 

Record

SN04648048-W 20170827/170825232108-07a2a27b19ac1e8f5ac82b162e538e8a (fbodaily.com)
 

Source

FedBizOpps Link to This Notice
(may not be valid after Archive Date)

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