IRS releases road map for modernization

The Internal Revenue Service Thursday released a comprehensive plan for replacing the agency's outdated computer systems. The IRS and its team of systems integrators, led by Computer Sciences Corp., will base all of the agency's modernization efforts on the plan, known as Enterprise Architecture 1.0. "This document is driven by IRS business processes," said Paul Cosgrave, the agency's chief information officer. "1997's modernization blueprint didn't define new business processes." Cosgrave said the IRS will modernize its systems on an area-by-area basis according to the taxpayer segments around which the agency is organized. The strategy represents a change from an earlier blueprint, which suggested building a new system that would run parallel to legacy operations until it was deemed operational. "As we turn our vision into reality-project by project-the Enterprise Architecture gives us the ability to ensure that modernization projects are coordinated across the entire IRS enterprise, that they produce an integrated and unified set of systems and that they are scoped to eliminate duplication of effort," IRS Commissioner Charles Rossotti wrote in the introduction of the plan. The new architecture reflects recent advances in Web, security and portal technologies. The IRS plans to create three new Web portals aimed at citizens, its business partners and its own employees. The outline is not set in stone. "This blueprint is an evolving document," said Bert Concklin, director of the IRS's Business Systems Modernization Office. "It is meant to evolve to incorporate the functions of emerging technologies." Although the IRS is using this document as a modernization road map, it also satisfies the requirements of the 1996 Clinger Cohen Act, which calls on all agencies to produce enterprise-wide architectures.