DHS wants help with automating electronic invoicing
The Department of Homeland Security is looking for ways to automate electronic invoicing so it can process the more than 200,000 submissions it handles annually in accordance with federal requirements.
DHS wants information technology support that will help its Financial Systems Modernization (FSM) Joint Program Management Office (JPMO) implement products that properly receive electronic submissions and manage data, according to a sources sought synopsis issued Friday.
The current Kofax MarkView platform doesn’t rely on machine learning or artificial intelligence technologies that the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FINCEN) bureau within the Treasury Department mandates. FINCEN sets the rules governmentwide for safeguarding financial systems from fraud and abuse, as well as sharing data for law enforcement purposes.
“The objective of this requirement is to update and comply with federal law and regulations to deliver high quality financial services at the lowest price, and automation is playing an increasing role in the future of FINCEN operations,” reads the synopsis from DHS. “Utilizing current technologies such as machine learning, artificial intelligence, as well as other technologies will enable processing volumes transactions in a more efficient manner.”
The invoices in question are all paper and electronic submissions from vendors and within government across all DHS headquarters programs and agencies.
JPMO coordinates all efforts supporting the FSM program, which DHS launched in 2011 to reduce the number of IT systems its agencies use.
While the type of solicitation hasn’t been decided, DHS is planning a one-year contract with a one-year option for software engineers, testers, business process re-engineering, change management, and IT portfolio management.
Contract support will be expected to complete five tasks:
- Data capture and optical character recognition for scanned invoices.
- Automated workflow and robotic process automation for routing invoices, sending approval and rejection notifications, masking sensitive data like banking information, and optimizing based on learned human behavior.
- Process analytics and a dashboard for monitoring business process and invoice statuses, as well as finding anomalies.
- Test and development environments.
- Training of initial user groups.
Businesses that feel they can deliver the solution sought have until Feb. 8 to respond to the synopsis.
