R408--FRAUD PREVENTION SERVICES

REQUEST FOR INFORMATION RFI 36C10D25Q0058 1.0 INTRODUCTION THIS IS NOT A SOLICITATION. The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA) is issuing this Request for Information (RFI) for Fraud Prevention Services (FPS). This RFI is issued solely for information and planning purposes only. There is no obligation for the Government to acquire any products or services described in this RFI. In accordance with the Federal Acquisition Regulations (FAR) Subpart 15.201(e), responses to this notice are not offers and cannot be accepted by the Government to form a binding contract. No funds have been authorized, appropriated, or received for this effort. The information provided may be used by VBA in developing its acquisition strategy and informing, refining, and finalizing a Performance Work Statement (PWS). Interested parties are responsible for adequately marking proprietary, restricted or competition sensitive information contained in their response. Only electronic responses to this RFI will be accepted. The Government will not pay for any time expended or information submitted in response to this RFI. Eligibility in participating in a future acquisition does not depend upon a response to this RFI. 2.0 BACKGROUND Through its three (3) administrations, National Cemetery Administration (NCA), Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA), and Veterans Health Administration (VHA), Veterans Affairs (VA) administers vital services to America's Veterans. VA provides health care services, benefits programs, and access to national cemeteries for former military personnel and their dependents. The fundamental mission of VBA is to provide Veterans, transitioning service members, and their families with benefits and services including education benefits, home loans, life insurance, and disability compensation or pension benefits. Award of these benefits often requires information gathering from a multitude of third parties, government agencies and digital repositories as well as the application of complex rules. Within VBA, the Office of Financial Management (OFM) provides strategic planning, oversight, and service delivery to proactively safeguard Veteran benefits and promote fiscal stewardship. In 2018, the Benefits Delivery Protection & Remediation (BDP&R) Directorate was established under the OFM within VBA to support the VBA enterprise in its efforts to reduce the impacts of Fraud, Waste, and Abuse (FWA) on the delivery of Veteran benefits. Through the BDP&R Directorate, VBA has established a permanent and dedicated resource for counter-FWA and risk management support to VBA, including the Lines of Business (LoB) and Staff Offices (SO) responsible for the delivery of benefits and services delivered under the VBA mission: Compensation Service; Education Service; Insurance Service; Loan Guaranty Service; Medical Disability Examination Office; Office of Administrative Review; Outreach, Transition and Economic Development; Pension and Fiduciary Service; Strategic Program Management Office; and Veteran Readiness and Employment. VBA has embraced a novel approach to risk management by investing resources in BDP&R to provide an extra layer of support to the LoBs and SOs in developing and maintaining internal controls over programs, operations, and benefits delivery. BDP&R proactively partners with the business owners to perform risk assessments, followed by deep-dive analyses to determine FboNotice causes of risks, and the development of new, or enhancement of existing internal controls to effectively manage risks. BDP&R does not operate from an oversight and compliance position of authority; it is strictly collaborative. This approach aims to improve the VBA ability to detect, prevent, and mitigate FWA. As part of these duties, OFM, BDP&R contracts for specific services to engage industry expertise in advanced analytics and operations. Over the last decade, there have been ongoing efforts to increase Veteran self-service access for benefits delivery. As ease of access is delivered, it must be balanced with security measures to prevent fraud against Veterans, fraud against the VA, and to ensure sound fiscal stewardship over taxpayer dollars. Modern technology, including artificial intelligence (AI), will advance the VBA s ability to deliver services and benefits to Veterans, and also enable the VA to respond to bad actor fraud more aggressively. It is estimated agencies lose an average of between 3 and 7 percent of obligated funds annually to bad actor fraud. Additional losses are derived through waste, improper payments, and abuse. BDP&R seeks innovative solutions to identify, mitigate, and eliminate FWA. This Request for Information (RFI) describes BDP&R requirements for contractor support related to FWA awareness, prevention, and remediation services. In addition, the purpose of the RFI is to engage industry vendors with expert knowledge and extensive experience as well as with credibility in addressing and mitigating FWA risks. The government seeks innovative solutions from industry to protect Veteran benefits from FWA. The VA/VBA plans to hold a virtual RFI Industry Day in support of this RFI and will provide an overview presentation. The Virtual Industry Day will be held on Tuesday June 3, 2025, between 2:00 pm 3:00 pm eastern time. Please view the following information for attending the event: Register Link: https://veteransaffairs.webex.com/weblink/register/rd8e7f85704d7eb23a7a6be75092df2cf Join Link: https://veteransaffairs.webex.com/veteransaffairs/j.php?MTID=m34afd0738b822e3ed884385469420f4d Webinar number: 2829 039 3119 Webinar password: M8UtxqZP?67 (68889797 when dialing from a phone or video system) Join by phone: 14043971596 USA Toll Number Access code: 2829 039 3119 3.0 INFORMATION SOUGHT The Government is seeking the following information to be provided by the vendors when responding to the RFI: Company Information Capability Statement Answers to Questions Draft Statement of Objective (SOO) Comments 3.1 Company Information RFI respondents shall provide the following information: Company Name Company Address Company Point of Contact (name, address, telephone number, email address) Unique Entity Identifier (UEI) NAICS Codes and business size for NAICS code 541611 - Identify if your company has any of the following business concern statuses (include all that apply): Small Business (SB); Certified Small Business Administration (SBA) 8(a) firm; Small Disadvantaged Business (SDB); Service-Disabled, Veteran-Owned Small Business (SDVOSB); Veteran-Owned Small Business (VOSB); Economically Disadvantaged Women-Owned Small Business (EDWOSB); Woman-Owned Small Business (WOSB); Historically Underutilized Business Zone (HubZone) Small Business; Large Business Existing Multiple Award Contract (MAC) vehicles currently held by your company (examples may include General Service Administrations (GSA) schedules, Government-Wide Acquisition Contracts (GWACs), Indefinite Delivery Contracts (IDCs), Blanket Purchase Agreements (BPAs)) available for Government use. For each MAC vehicle provide: vehicle name vehicle number date of award expiration date 3.2 Capability Statement RFI respondents shall provide a capability statement with an overview of the company s capabilities to fulfill the requirements of the attached SOO. Overview should include but not be limited to: Details regarding proposed joint ventures, teaming arrangements, strategic alliances, or other business arrangements to satisfy requirements of the entire SOO. Description of the company s resources available and capable of completing the work under the SOO. Explanation of what experience providing services similar in size, scope, and complexity of the FPS SOO the company has. List of specific contracts in the Government or industry where the vendor provided similar services on the same scale and provide Agency / Company name, contract number, contract period of performance and contract dollar value. 3.3 Answers to Questions RFI respondents shall provide answers to the questions provided in Section 5.0 of this RFI. RFI respondents are requested to address each question. Questions that do not apply to RFI respondents or RFI respondents cannot provide answers to shall be addressed by marking these questions with N/A . 3.4 Draft SOO Comments/Questions RFI respondents shall provide comments/questions on the SOO in the following table format: Comment # SOO Page # SOO Section # Comment The comments/questions may include recommended changes, noted errors, inconsistencies, ambiguities, areas requiring further clarifications or higher level of detail, etc. Where possible, the VBA will address these questions during the Virtual Industry Day Webinar referenced above. 4.0 SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS Response submissions to this RFI are due no later than May 19, 2025, 3:00 pm Eastern Time and shall be submitted to gregory.stevens@va.gov The email subject line must contain the following: Response to RFI 36C10D25Q0058. VBA reserves the right to not reply to any emails, responses, questions, and materials submitted in response to the RFI. Mark your response as Proprietary Information if the information included is considered to be business sensitive and/or includes trade secrets. RFI responses shall not exceed 30 pages total. Responses shall be prepared in Microsoft Word with standard 8.5 x 11-inch page format (charts may be landscaped but must be on 8.5 x 11-inch page format) and shall be in Times New Roman, font size (12), with 1 margins. All page format of the response shall be appropriately numbered and identified with the RFI number. The email file size limitation shall be no more than 40MB. 5.0 LIST OF QUESTIONS 1) Please describe your company s strategy to address the full scope of work, to include risk management, solution management, incident and event management, and education and outreach and communication support services as outlined in the Statement of Objectives (SOO). Please describe any relevant experience within the Government or Industry that demonstrates your capabilities in each service area. How would you address any gaps in your service offerings?   2) Please describe innovations you have employed on other projects and how those innovations differentiate your company from others in regard to the types of services outlined in the SOO. 3) Please outline the experience your company has in scaling, making recommendations, and incorporating continuous improvement principles to enable service delivery and achieving objectives in the SOO. 4) Please describe your company s approach to quality assurance, employing performance metrics, and your success in meeting Quality Assurance Surveillance Plan (QASP) performance objectives on similar efforts.   5) Please describe your company s approach to independently conducting research and providing periodic assessments for dynamic threat vectors, and how that research informs the recommendations to the Government for solutions that address benefits fraud and reducing waste and abuse. 6) Please describe your approach to curb financial crimes that impact Veterans as well as your engagement with private industry, fraud prevention groups, and stakeholders to provide and implement preventive solutions in support of the Government. 7) What is your company s approach for proposing and implementing evolving technologies such as machine learning, natural language processing, robotic processing ( bots ) or full artificial intelligence to drive automation for solutions?  How do you ensure these technologies remain current and effective? Can you provide any examples of successful integrations in similar projects? 8) What specialized qualifications does your company recommend enabling service delivery in the areas of data science, predictive analytics, and forensic analyses to include the areas of risk management and stakeholder communications for fraud, waste, and abuse?    9) Please describe your company s experience with protecting Personally Identifiable Information (PII) and Protected Health Information (PHI) when utilizing large databases and processing transactional activities associated with tracking source materials locally and remotely in a secure environment. How do you stay current with evolving data protection regulations and threats? Include details on your disaster recovery and business continuity plans.  10) The Government will be migrating from a manual capability to a Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRamp) compliant cloud computing environment. Contractors will be required to analyze large volumes of data residing in systems maintained by the Veterans Benefits Administration (VBA). Please describe your company s approach to advising the Government in the areas of sizing, configuration, system interfaces, optimization, and compliance assurance, and in obtaining authorities to operate (ATOs) in new environments. 11) Please describe any experiences with electronic business process reengineering and integration based on complex multi-level processing rules. Please describe the pricing structures used (e.g., transaction-based; quantity-based; price-banding based on volume; price-banding based on complexity; etc.).  How do you ensure fairness and transparency in these pricing structures? 12) What recommendations would your company make regarding pricing structures for these types of services?  How do these recommendations align with Government best practices and regulations while allowing flexibility in service delivery? 6.0 ATTACHMENTS Attachment 1 - Draft Statement of Objectives (Veterans Affairs Fraud Prevention Services SOO)