Smoothing Bumps on The Hill

Randolph C. Hite, director of information technology systems issues at the General Accounting Office, calls the relationship between GAO and the IRS "effective," while IRS Commissioner Charles O. Rossotti heaps praise on the audit agency. "There is no way we could go forward with a major program like this without having GAO or something like GAO look at the program independently," he says.

The relationship between the IRS and Congress is necessarily more complicated because the agency must depend on Congress to fund the modernization program over the course of several years. "We're told by the IRS that they need more money because funding requirements have changed. But when you don't see performance results month after month, year after year, Congress gets frustrated," says a Senate Governmental Affairs Committee staffer who has monitored the IRS' modernization.

Rossotti admits the give-and-take with legislators can be rough-and-tumble. "Typically, when we have made funding requests, [Congress] has noted certain conditions we need to meet to move forward," he says. As long as the IRS is willing to meet those objectives, funding hasn't been an issue, he says.