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Contract Opportunity

Section 1: RFI Overview

We are seeking information about what financial fraud identification and management solutions currently exist in the market and are interested in learning about tools and solutions both for reducing improper payments and preventing financial fraud.

It’s important to note that our scope only seeks to address financial fraud that leads to improper payments, i.e., payments that should not have been made or that were made in an incorrect amount. Financial fraud-related improper payments generally involve individuals or entities intentionally or knowingly providing false information such as incorrect eligibility or identity information to receive federal benefits or other federal payments.

We are seeking to optimize and scale Treasury’s existing data analytics capabilities to support federal agencies and federally funded state administered (FFSA) programs in identifying and preventing financial fraud that results in improper payments. As the central disbursing agency, Treasury is uniquely positioned to advance payment integrity by providing governmentwide solutions to prevent financial fraud and improper payments in federally funded programs. Specifically, the Office of Payment Integrity within Treasury’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service advances payment integrity by providing tools, data, and expertise to enable federally funded programs to focus on prevention; promoting best practices; and building partnerships with key stakeholders throughout the payment lifecycle. Fiscal Service is looking to build upon its current payment integrity services, including data matching through its Do Not Pay portal, bank account verification, and data analytics.

We are seeking providers who can enhance our efforts to find solutions to advise whether to suspend a payment or let it through, ensure lessons learned in financial fraud mitigation and deterrence are applied going forward, and enable solutions to help States and Federal agencies better combat improper payments from financial fraud in the pre-payment stage so as to minimize the number of fraudulent payments needing to be clawed back.

Please note that this Request for Information (RFI) is for informational purposes only, and no contract will be awarded as a result. A firm or organization’s response to the RFI—or lack thereof—will have no impact on the evaluation of responses to any subsequent Request for Proposals (RFP) or Invitation to Bid (ITB) that may be released. Responses will be used solely for information and planning purposes.

Section 2: Background Information

Payment integrity – paying the right person, in the right amount, at the right time – is one of the most important functions that government performs. As the federal government’s central disbursing agency, Treasury is uniquely positioned to advance payment integrity by providing governmentwide solutions to prevent fraud and improper payments in federally funded programs. Treasury will achieve this by providing tools, data, and expertise to enable federally funded programs to focus on prevention; promoting best practices; and building partnerships with key stakeholders throughout the payment lifecycle.

Treasury’s Bureau of the Fiscal Service provides payment services for more than 300 federal agencies, securely disbursing 1.4 billion payments totaling more than $6.9 trillion in FY2023, to more than 100 million people. Your federal income tax refunds; Social Security benefits; Supplemental Security income; Railroad Retirement Board benefits; veteran's pay, pension, and education benefits all come from the Bureau of the Fiscal Service.

Federal program agencies send Fiscal Service a payment file known as a Standard Payment Request (SPR) that contains specific information on who and how much to pay. When a SPR is received by Fiscal Service, its schedules are matched to a certification from the Secure Payment System (SPS), a program of the Fiscal Service that is used by federal agencies to securely create, certify, and submit payments. Once an agency has certified the information in its payment file, the payment is disbursed to the recipient either electronically through ACH or as a check from Fiscal Service according to the payment schedules requested by the program agency.

This payment flow represents Treasury’s role as the government’s central disbursing agency, issuing 88% of all federal payments by volume and 78% by dollar in FY23. Put simply, Fiscal Service processes payments on behalf of federal agencies.

Section 3:

An industry day will be held one (1) full day in April 2024 TBD to be held in Washington, DC. Interested parties will be notified with ample time to respond. This will be a hybrid event.

Instructions for Responding to this Request for Information (RFI)

We are seeking no more than a one-page single-spaced response for every panel session. The response should include a capability statement for your organization’s solution(s) or service(s) which you will present during the convening panel session. The capability statement should address at least one of the session topics below. If your capability statement addresses more than one panel, you can submit a one-page single-spaced response for each panel session your solution(s) or service(s) fit under, but please note that you will have to select which panel to present at. Please make sure that in responding to how your offering addresses the topic of a particular panel session, you clearly articulate answers to the list of items under each panel session. We ask that you include those panel session(s) which you believe your capability statement addresses and also include at least one use case that showcases how the capability has been proven to work. Specifically, the use case should address how your solution helps to proactively mitigate financial fraud with measurable impact to help reduce improper payments.

Section 4 Proposed Panel Sessions

We seek expertise and solutions across five main pillars of payment integrity and financial fraud prevention, as outlined in the panel sessions below.

Session 1. Strategies for Financial Fraud Prevention to Ensure Fewer Improper Payments

• We want to hear best practices regarding establishing and maintaining an operating model for successful financial fraud prevention, for both businesses and individuals. We want to hear how this leads to reduced improper payments.
  
  


• How is maintaining a positive customer experience a tenet of a successful financial fraud prevention operating model? What are some best practices to support customers when a financial fraud event happens to them?
  
  


• What are best practices for measuring the effectiveness of financial fraud prevention programs, and are there industry-identified benchmarks for an acceptable/tolerable level of financial loss?

• How do organizations ensure agility in enterprise capabilities for supporting financial fraud prevention, detection, and investigation (recovery) across all segments, products and channels, with clear lines of responsibility?
  
  

Session 2. Specific Solutions to Prevent Financial Fraud

• We’re interested in industry leading technologies that can tell us the likelihood of a fraudulent transaction based on unusual spikes or trends throughout the history of the transaction.
  
  


• We’re interested in how solutions pinpoint the possibility of financial fraud in a payment relative to a baseline for “normal” transaction patterns. Do these solutions account for different payment frequencies (scheduled recurring, one-time payment, varied cadence) and different payment categories (benefit program, loan, disaster relief, other)?

• Describe your financial fraud and improper payment prediction models. Are they low latent, high throughput, and change to increasing/decreasing user demand? How do your payment integrity services grow/shrink as transaction volumes increase and/or decrease?
  
  


• What part of your technology, solutions, or service offering differentiates you from your competitors in industry? Other industries?

• Describe your tools for combatting account takeover, synthetic identity fraud, chargeback fraud (both intentional and unintentional/friendly fraud), and social engineering scams that redirect payment to a fraudster’s account.

Session 3. Successful Data Sharing Approaches to Preventing Financial Fraud

• Describe any methods and best practices for sharing data from federal agencies to Fiscal Service and vice versa, to payment systems and payment integrity tools, so as to reduce burden on agencies utilizing Fiscal Service to both send payments to and engage in OPI products/services.

• When sharing data with either other business units within your enterprise or other organizations, how do you navigate the need to balance privacy and security concerns to not reveal PII or other sensitive data that could compromise user identities? Discuss data protection standards that your organization has instituted.

• Describe use cases and best examples of how data sharing has helped improve your financial fraud detection rates.

• Are there valuable data sources the government should be leveraging that the private sector uses for financial fraud deterrence?
  
  


• Describe your use of APIs when sharing data. Do you share data with your customers using APIs?

Session 4. Know Your Customer Analytics to Prevent Financial Fraud and Reduce Improper Payments

• Describe how you collect and/or analyze characteristics of program end users to gather more information about them and prevent financial fraud, whether in real-time or after-the-fact.
  
  


• What are your business requirements for performing a “due diligence” check on every new and existing customer within your business to thoroughly verify their identity when they are requesting payment or making a payment?
  
  


• Describe available matching algorithms and risk classification systems to support identification and prioritization of potential matches against watchlists.

• Describe the data extraction techniques used by your enterprise to get potentially suspicious activity from public sources, such as financial statements, social media profiles and public records.

Session 5. AI Tools to Detect Financial Fraud

• Describe the AI tools/solutions your enterprise has for maximizing payment integrity.
  
  


• What risk management measures has your organization instituted around these AI solutions to ensure they are not biased?

• Articulate the future state expectations for AI solutioning in reducing financial fraud and define the current state of your AI program operations in the financial fraud space.
  
  


• Many AI applications require access to enormous amounts of transaction, customer and other data for initial training and ongoing functionality, much of it including the most sensitive customer data. Describe your due diligence in ensuring data protection standards and actions are utilized to prevent potential failures in privacy and security.

Interested vendors shall submit responses on or before the due date shown below:

Vendors shall submit responses to this notice by e-mail to purchasing@fiscal.treasury.gov no later than April 4th, 2024, 10:00am Eastern time. Responses shall reference “Response to RFI-ISS-24-052 ATTN: RG” in the subject line of the e-mail message.

Interested vendors shall provide their submission as outlined in section 3 instructions, inclusive of any pictures, graphs, or charts with a font size no smaller than 9 in Arial or Times Roman font that also identifies their:

1. Contact information,


2. Socio Economic Status(es) (Business Size)


3. Capabilities of their organization and key personnel (project manager(s))


4. Their existing Government-Wide Contract Vehicle number and SIN Categories/Pool Number. (e.g. GSA Schedule 00CORP contract, OASIS)

Responses submitted will assist the Government in its market research to determine the availability of commercial sources in determining an acquisition strategy in terms of setting aside this requirement. In order for Fiscal Service to assess set-aside possibilities, interested parties shall also identify their socio economic status(es) based on the following in their capability statement: 1) small business; 2) 8(a) business; 3) HUBZone small business; 4) small disadvantaged business; 5) woman-owned small business; 6) economic disadvantage women-owned small business; 7) veteran-owned small business; 8) service-disabled veteran-owned small business, or 9) large business under each of their GWACs.

All electronic materials and attachments submitted shall be formatted in accordance with the Bureau of the Fiscal Service’s Security Requirements. The following file extensions are not allowable and application materials/data submitted with these extensions cannot be opened:

.bat, .cmd, .com, .exe, .pif, .rar, .scr, .vbs, .hta, .cpl, html, mhtml, and .zip files

No pricing or technical approach is being requested or will be considered at this time. This is only a request for information for determining an acquisition strategy.

No other information regarding this Notice will be provided at this time.

This notice does not restrict the Government to an ultimate acquisition approach. All vendors responding to this notice are advised that their response is not an offer that will be considered for contract award. All interested parties will be required to respond to any resultant solicitation separately from their response to this notice.

NO SOLICITATION IS AVAILABLE. A request for more information, or a copy of the solicitation, will not be considered an affirmative response to this Notice. Telephone responses to, or inquiries about, this Notice will NOT be accepted. Fiscal Service reserves the final right to choose presenters during the Industry day.

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