I wonder if they will actually be able to deliver anything of any value to the IRS?
Throughout my career as an IT professional working alongside these Big-6 Accounting (and now IT Services) firms, they pile on junior consultants that bill, bill, bill with not much to show for it. Pretty PowerPoints, Lots of Project Plans, Strategy docs…
Changing systems in the IRS will take a jackhammer and bulldozer and those that “run the place” are usually the types that resist change.
Not hopeful…
'38Packard
What are the options? Self-managed with internal resources? A defense industry contractor? IBM? Huawei?
JimA
Hey @JimA759s,
I don’t have any specific recommendations on how to best improve the systems at the IRS because I have never stepped foot in an IRS processing center and have no idea what they can do to improve their processes.
I can assume from my experience that many “legacy” businesses and government agencies are way behind the times in their core systems due to lack of funding for upgrades, so the technology ages and ages. That, and the resistance to change in these types of organizations makes it very difficult to make major changes to the process.
Internal champions may be able to help influence the organization to adopt / embrace change, but the larger the organization, the harder it is for the change agents to be effective. I can probably say with a pretty high degree of confidence that the end result will not be what we taxpayers would be hoping to get with the investment that will be made.
'38Packard
Visit this IRS center: https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/interactive/2022/irs-pipeline-tax-return-delays/?itid=hp_most-read_1 - and have a look at where we are at.
I can say with a pretty high degree of confidence that the end result will be far, far better than what we currently have. Seeking perfection is the enemy!
Of course the political issues will restrict how much change we can have; such as the IRS just sending a bill each year with it’s record of your income and you just agree or do a tax return. the lobbying arm of the TaxActs/TurboTax/HRBlock, etc are well fortified with cash and aren’t afraid to use it.
JimA