The Internal Revenue Service is generally meeting the letter, if not the spirit, of the Clinger-Cohen Act, according to a July 9 report from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration.

The agency's processes falls short in the Capital Planning and Investment Control requirement, by not "identifying investments that would result in shared benefits or costs for other Federal agencies or State or local governments," auditors charge.

Both the CPIC process and governance activities align with the business needs across the enterprise and the modernized vision of the IRS, said the report. However, when the director of strategy and capital planning updated the CPIC Process Guide, the shared benefits and costs portion was absent.

Without this requirement, "the IRS is not meeting the intent of the Clinger-Cohen Act," said the report. "Addressing a process to identify these shared benefits and costs helps the organization to maximize the value and assess and manage the risk of its IT acquisitions."

TIGTA recommended that the IRS:

• Identify which IT applications, already in use at the agency, share benefits and costs with other government entities; and
• revise the CPIC process to get more value from, and better analyze IT acquisitions.

According to the report, the IRS agreed with the IG's recommendations and made plans for improvement.

For more:
- see the TIGTA report 

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