By Stephanie Kanowitz
Jan 29, 2021
When the National Defense Authorization Act required the IRS procurement office to insert telecommunications security language into all its contracts, staff used a bot to accomplish in three days what would have taken a year.
“As we looked at the number of contracts that had that criteria, it was 1,466 active contracts,” IRS Chief Procurement Officer Shanna Webbers said. “It would have taken us almost up to a year to modify all of those contracts.”
Called the DATA Act Bot, the tool focuses on improving transparency and accuracy of data in the Federal Procurement Data System and on improving compliance with its namesake, the Digital Accountability and Transparency Act of 2014. The bot, which incorporates artificial intelligence, natural language processing, optical character recognition and robotic process automation, is one of three that the office uses to streamline operations.