Recommendation: To help IRS improve its process for determining IT funding priorities and to provide timely information on the progress of its investments, the Commissioner of IRS should direct the Chief Technology Officer to establish, document, and implement policies and procedures for selecting new and reselecting ongoing business systems modernization activities, consistent with IRS's process for prioritizing operations support priorities, which addresses (1) prioritization and comparison of IT assets against each other, (2) criteria for making selection and prioritization decisions, and (3) ensuring IRS executives' final funding decisions on IT proposals are based on IRS's prioritization process.
Agency: Department of the Treasury: Internal Revenue Service
Status: Open
Comments: In September 2018, IRS provided GAO a slide deck titled "Prioritization Process for the Business Systems Modernization (BSM) Program/Projects" which describes a process for prioritizing BSM investments and capabilities within the investments. However, the slides were labeled "pre-decisional." In addition, they did not include specific procedures for prioritizing investments. In April 2020, IRS informed us that it had moved its target for fully implementing the recommendation to November 2020. We will continue to monitor IRS's efforts to implement the recommendation.
Recommendation: To help IRS improve its process for determining IT funding priorities and to provide timely information on the progress of its investments, the Commissioner of IRS should direct the Chief Technology Officer to modify existing processes for Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA) and Return Review Program (RRP) for measuring work performed by IRS staff to incorporate best practices, including accounting for actual work performed and using the level of effort measure sparingly.
Agency: Department of the Treasury: Internal Revenue Service
Status: Open
Comments: In May 2018, IRS told GAO it had implemented the recommendation. As supporting evidence, the agency provided an April 2018 update to its Investment Performance Tool user guide along with briefing slides specifying actions taken to modify its processes to measure work performed by IRS staff. We reviewed the evidence provided and determined that it was not sufficient to close the recommendation as implemented. Specifically, while the Investment Performance Tool user guide included updated procedures for measuring work performed by IRS staff which aligned with best practices, it did not clearly state that earned value (or work performed) during an iteration should always be based on to the percentage of planned features or user stories that were completed for that iteration. In addition, IRS did not provide evidence that it had used its updated procedures for the Return Review Program investment. We followed up with IRS to obtain this documentation. The agency subsequently provided the requested documentation to us and, as of July 2020, we were reviewing it to determine the extent to which it addresses the recommendation.
