IRS: New effort at modernizing must start fresh

By Christopher J. Dorobek

Connecting state and local government leaders

| March 29, 1999

IRS sets six filing goals Following a decade of failed modernization efforts, the IRS is essentially starting over, a senior IRS executive said this month. The last modernization effort was a $3.3 billion failure, said Albert E. Mazei, assistant commissioner for the IRS' Program Management and Architecture Office.

IRS
sets six filing goals






	Following a decade of failed modernization efforts, the IRS is essentially starting over, a senior IRS executive said this month. The last modernization effort was a $3.3 billion failure, said Albert E. Mazei, assistant commissioner for the IRS Program Management and Architecture Office. Most of its technology is not being used because it did not work, he said during the Information Technology Executive Symposium at the FOSE trade show in Washington. In December, the IRS awarded its estimated $5 billion, 15-year Prime contract to Computer Sciences Corp., which will spearhead the new modernization effort [GCN, Dec. 14, 1998, Page 1]. CSC will assign modular task orders so the IRS can monitor progress and avoid further failures, he said. Under that contract, CSC will oversee competitions among subcontractors for which vendor can offer the best solutions, Mazei said. A stark difference exists between industry best practices and the way the IRS has been operating, he said. You dont have the tools, you dont have the training, you dont have the space. Its no wonder it failed, Mazei said. The IRS has little choice but to modernize its antiquated systems. The only thing that has kept the IRS together over the years has been heroes, he said. My fear is those heroes are about to retire. The average age of the agencys employees is more than 45, he said. Within five years, many of those people are going to be gone, so the tax service needs to implement the modernization quickly, he said. The tax service is also reorganizing itself. The IRS is working to centralize its information technology efforts and leave behind its haphazard development practices. Before late last year, the IT shop had control over only 50 percent of the IT budget. The other half was under control of specific IRS divisions. Since October, the IRS has treated IT as a resource, centrally directing 100 percent of the budget and centrally managing 75 percent of the staff, Mazei said. It was totally out of control, with no standardization of systems, Mazei said. Last year, for example, the IRS had 67 mainframes at 11 sites that were all configured differently. Now there are 33 mainframes at nine sites; within 18 months the tax service wants to have cut that to 12 mainframes at two sites. The IRS IT shop has also adopted a more customer service-oriented mission statement that focuses on providing quality information systems to meet the organizations goal to focus on customers and let managers be accountable, Mazei said. One of the biggest issues is creating an agency that can change quickly. That is not easy, because the IRS is criticized regardless of what it does, Mazei said.

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