IRS Employee Evaluations: Opportunities to Better Balance Customer Service and Compliance Objectives
GGD-00-1
Published: Oct 14, 1999. Publicly Released: Oct 14, 1999.
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Highlights
Pursuant to a congressional request, GAO reviewed the extent to which the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) employee evaluation system can support the new mission statement during the period IRS will need to revamp its performance management system, focusing on: (1) determining the relative emphasis on revenue production, efficiency, and customer service in enforcement employees' annual written evaluations; (2) identifying features of the evaluation process that might be used to greater advantage to reinforce the importance of customer service; and (3) describing IRS initiatives to promote customer service, including those to encourage enforcement employees to be taxpayer oriented.
Recommendations
Recommendations for Executive Action
| Agency Affected | Recommendation | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Internal Revenue Service | The Commissioner of Internal Revenue should develop an interim approach for making better use of enforcement employees' performance evaluations to develop and encourage good customer service. The approach could include providing guidance on the conditions under which supervisors should provide narrative for critical job elements and conduct field visits in assessing individual employees. As part of developing the approach, the Commissioner should determine whether to better enforce the existing agency policies requiring that supervisors conduct midyear progress reviews of all enforcement employees and review a sample of their caseloads annually. |
Closed – Implemented
Guidance has been issued on when supervisors should provide narrative for critical job elements, conducting field visits, and midyear progress reviews.
|
| Internal Revenue Service | The Commissioner of Internal Revenue should ensure that the Collection Division supervisors are given more comprehensive guidance on how the revised elements are to be incorporated into the evaluation process and used to evaluate revenue officers. |
Closed – Not Implemented
IRS is revamping its employee evaluation system for revenue officers. IRS has changed the employees' critical job elements, which are different than those on which we based our recommendation. Therefore, GAO's recommendation is no longer applicable.
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Customer serviceManagement reengineeringPerformance appraisalPerformance managementPerformance measuresPersonnel managementTax administrationTaxpayersAgency evaluationsTax laws