The Internal Revenue Service has hired Terence Milholland as its first ever Chief Technology Officer, Federal Computer Week reports. Milholland has almost 30 years of information technology experience in the private sector, most recently as Executive Vice President and CTO for Visa International. Prior to Visa he worked as the CIO/CTO for Electronic Data Systems (EDS) and CIO at Boeing Company. He started his new job at the IRS on Monday.
Milholland will be responsible for all aspects of the systems that operate the nation's tax infrastructure. That's not going to be an easy job; the IRS is reported to be suffering from major debilitating technology problems right now. We summarize some of those problems below.
A Government Accountability Office report issued last week found that the agency suffers from "serious issues with outdated financial management systems and insufficient information security that could affect the accuracy of its financial statements," according to coverage by NextGov.
"Until IRS successfully manages its information security risks, management will not have adequate assurance of the integrity and reliability of the information generated from its financial management systems, or its ability to effectively safeguard sensitive taxpayer information," the GAO report said.
That GAO report was issued one week after a US Treasury report that concluded the IRS was making significant progress.
As the world of technology and financial information explodes online and off, we can only imagine that the challenges faced by the agency will increase exponentially.
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