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The Internal Revenue Service awarded a $550,000 contract Thursday to a Herndon, Va., company to complete the second phase of a plan to upgrade and consolidate complaints tracking systems at the agency.

"It's a Web-based system, it doesn't require any software on anybody's personal computer, and about 500 users across the country throughout IRS will have access to it," said Jim D'Elia, chief of information systems development at the IRS Commissioner's Complaints Processing and Analysis Group (CCPAG). CCPAG is responsible for reporting the number, type and disposition of complaints about personnel practices made by IRS employees to the Treasury Department's inspector general.

In past years, Congress and the General Accounting Office have criticized the IRS for not having a centralized system for all types of employee-related complaints, including discrimination complaints lodged by employees and complaints from taxpayers about employee rudeness and violations of the "10 Deadly Sins." The 10 Deadly Sins," a list of infractions detailed in Section 1203(b) of the 1998 IRS Restructuring and Reform Act, range from assaulting taxpayers and co-workers to late filing of their own tax returns.

Last year, the agency merged two computer systems used to track these complaints into one system. Before the two systems were merged, the agency had, in fact, used three separate systems to track the complaints, but complaints could end up on one or more of these systems. That made reporting and tracking complaints difficult, D'Elia said. Since many of the complaints have the potential to grow into whistleblower cases, the recent merger of the two remaining systems helped protect IRS employees by providing a reliable, electronic paper trail, D'Elia said.

This new system, which will be managed by MicroPact Engineering, will allow the IRS to enter complaints directly into the computer. The computer will then automatically assign cases to IRS officers who handle complaints.

EEO complaint data will also be included as part of the upgrade. An existing complaints management system will be eliminated and complaints received as referrals from the Treasury Inspector General's Office will be transmitted electronically into the new system, rather than being handled on paper. According to D'Elia, the latter change will mean saving time and paper in the overall processing of the complaints and allow for electronic status reports.

"This will help in our reporting system to Congress," D'Elia said.

The new system should be up and running by February and includes an online tutorial.

"It's very user-friendly as far as learning how to enter the complaints and actually doing the casework on the complaints," D'Elia said. "It's not that difficult to learn how to use it."