IRS technology chief tackles modernization effort

Todd Grams has one of the most taxing assignments in government. As chief information officer at the Internal Revenue Service, he must rescue the latest multibillion-dollar effort to overhaul the agency's computer systems. Many CIOs have wrestled with the IRS, but none has had Todd Grams' combination of grim determination and federal management experience. He plans to win.

The current troubled effort to modernize began in December 1998, when the IRS launched an ambitious 15-year plan to change the way it does business. In the late 1990s, the agency reeled from charges of employee abuse and mismanagement. In congressional testimony and in the press, citizens told of tax collectors descending on the sick or the dying, threatening to take people to the cleaners if they didn't cough up for the Tax Man. Even more than usual, the agency was Public Enemy No. 1.

The 1998 plan was supposed to salvage the agency's reputation, turning the IRS into a modern, customer-friendly organization. It would replace its aged technology with fresh computers and networks to support a new storefront of sorts, sporting a toll-free help desk for questions and a slick Web site to let taxpayers file electronically. The technology would wire together an IRS reorganized from a vast, chaotic bureaucracy into four friendly, customer-focused business units. The old Tax Man was turning in his brass knuckles for velvet gloves.

Technology Editor Shane Harris recounts Grams' struggle this month in Government Executive magazine. To read more, click here.