The Block: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement wants to automate its accounting — and that includes transactions in bitcoin

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)'s tech division has put out a request for information for software that the agency could use to beef up its financial auditing management capabilities — and that includes its employees' interactions with and utilization of bitcoin.

The agency is looking to build a financial management add-on to an existing piece of open-source application, according to the request. The hope is to digitize the existing functions and add a centralized accounting system to automate workflow related to financial transactions.

Within the call, ICE detailed a number of example scenarios it's looking to address. Among these was a digital currency use case calling for software to track transfers, purchases and expenses in bitcoin.

Here's how the RFI explains the digital currency use cases, mentioning bitcoin specifically:

" DIGITAL CURRENCY • Respective employee A transferred 0.03790587 BTC of held digital currency from hardware wallet F to an software wallet G. The fair market value was an exchange rate of $8,531.08. The transfer incurred a mining fee of 0.00021801 BTC. • Respective employee A purchased 0.01487506 BTC through Digital Currency Exchange E (exchange rate $6,521.65) with a Coinbase fee of $2.99. Respective employee A transferred the total amount purchased from the Digital Currency Exchange E wallet to a hardware wallet F. Incurred mining fee 0.00001409 BTC. • Expense of 0.0191111 BTC paid from wallet. Incurred a mining fee of 0.00043663. Exchange rate on the date of purchase was $13,211.39. Remainder transferred back to software wallet G, which received 0.01777286 BTC. Incurred a mining fee of 0.00036727."

Businesses with suitable feedback and solutions can submit answers to the agency's questions by November 9. They may be selected for one-on-one consultations based on their responses.