Inspector General Report: Biden's IRS Does Not Have Specific Plans to Replace and Decommission Legacy Systems

August 7, 2024 – TREASURY INSPECTOR GENERAL FOR TAX ADMINISTRATION: The IRS Does Not Have Specific Plans to Replace and Decommission Legacy Systems

The IRS fully and effectively implemented the planned corrective actions for two of four prior TIGTA recommendations. The IRS implemented a policy requiring system information updates to the As-Built Architecture. System information was updated within a year of our review for 732 of 733 systems and the remaining system was updated just over one year of our review. In addition, specific system information in the As-Built Architecture is complete. All 733 systems in the As-Built Architecture had the required information on the managing organization(s), application age, and programming language. However, the IRS fully implemented two planned corrective actions that were not effective. There is no enterprise-wide program to identify, prioritize, and execute the updating, replacing, or retiring of legacy systems. While the IRS established the Technology Retirement Office in August 2021 to strategically reduce the information technology footprint across the enterprise, the office shut down in January 2023. As of December 2023, the IRS had identified only 107 (32 percent) of 334 legacy systems in the As-Built Architecture as candidates for retirement, while the remaining 227 legacy systems had not been identified for retirement. Of the 107 legacy systems, only two systems have specific decommissioning plans. The remaining 105 systems did not have specific decommissioning plans. In addition, the IRS did not properly apply its definition of a legacy system to identify all legacy systems. Applying the IRS’s definition, our analysis identified 344 systems as legacy. However, a review of a March 2024 report determined that the IRS incorrectly identified five additional systems as legacy. IRS personnel stated that the discrepancy was due to a query programming error, which has since been corrected. A subsequent review of an April 2024 report found two additional systems that had not been identified as legacy but should have been, bringing the total number of legacy systems to 346.

What TIGTA Recommended

TIGTA recommended that the Chief Information Officer should: 1) re-establish the Technology Retirement Office or implement a similar enterprise-wide program to identify, prioritize, and decommission legacy systems, and 2) ensure that the definition of a legacy system is properly applied and programmed in the query to correctly identify all legacy systems. The IRS partially agreed with the first recommendation and plans to deliver a roadmap, which will reflect milestones toward delivering new capabilities, and work to decommission legacy systems as new capabilities become available. The IRS agreed with the second recommendation and plans to update the programmed query definition.

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