IR-2012-42: Prepared Remarks Commissioner of Internal Revenue Douglas H. Shulman before the National Press Club
Internal Revenue Service (IRS) sent this bulletin at 04/05/2012 01:05 PM EDT
 |
||
|
||
News EssentialsThe Newsroom TopicsIRS Resources |
Issue Number: IR-2012-42Inside This IssuePrepared Remarks Commissioner of Internal Revenue Douglas H. Shulman before the National Press Club WASHINGTON ― Thank you and it’s great to be back at the National Press Club at a time when the city seems to really come alive again. Anyone who visits Washington comes away with a sense of permanence and timelessness. All of the granite, marble and limestone that went into building the colonnades and statues that adorn this beautiful city speak to us of the enduring legacy of our great nation…of heritage and hope…tradition and trust…fairness and freedom…character and courage. Collectively, these monuments also bear testimony to the enormous progress this country has made over the centuries…of men and women who were not afraid to embrace new ideas… and men and women who were not afraid to challenge the past and old ways of thinking. However, the germination of any idea…the cultivation of a concept…is only the beginning. Then, begins the real work of teasing it into life, and growing it. And that process never ends. It’s one of continuous improvement. As IBM’s Thomas Watson said, “Whenever an individual or business decides that success has been attained, progress stops.” This has been my experience as Commissioner of the IRS. I look back to what the IRS was like before the major reorganization took place in 1998 and where we are today…a sustained arc of progress that had a very different beginning. Looking into the rear-view mirror, there was a time that the IRS was thought of as an organization that seemed mired in the past…one that had not kept pace with advances in technology…one that was slow to adapt to emerging best practices in customer service and compliance…and one that was slow to recognize an increasingly evolving and changing taxpayer base and the broad implications that a global economy had on the tax system. But standing before you today…standing on the shoulders of those who began reimagining what the Internal Revenue Service could be in the 21st century…it is gratifying to see and share with you the meaningful…and I believe, lasting progress that has been made. As IRS Commissioner, I am the head of a 100,000 employee financial services institution that processes over $2.5 trillion annually for over 200 million individuals, businesses, and non-profits. People often ask me how do you get an organization as big as the IRS to move forward on key initiatives. Two of the key factors are to set the right strategy, one which people believe in and you can explain, and then to stay focused. I’m a believer in relentless and myopic focus on priorities – not getting distracted by too many crises or incoming demands – and making sure that you communicate these priorities clearly inside and outside the institution that you run to ensure there is broad support. This is much easier said than done – especially in a government agency – but staying focused and consistent over multiple years is a key to success. So today, I wanted to share with you some of the results of four years of relentless focus on a handful of strategic priorities we set for the IRS. The priorities are:
Let me begin with our efforts to modernize our technology, and one critical program in particular that’s called the Customer Account Data Engine – or CADE2. You may have seen video footage from the 1960s, where very earnest looking people load enormous tapes onto mainframe computers to perform what was then a magical feat of automated data processing. Fast forward more than 40 years, and although the tapes are much smaller, and robotic arms move them from place to place, the IRS still operates some of its core systems using the same basic technology. You might ask yourself – why? The answer is complicated, and has at least three parts. First – because it works. The IRS was one of the first institutions to deploy data processing on a large scale and some of the original systems were truly engineering marvels. Although they were advanced at the time, there are now a dwindling number of people who understand the old systems, and it is incredibly expensive to train new people on this obsolete technology. Second – because the IRS has built an elaborate set of newer systems and technologies that compensate for the shortcomings of the legacy systems. This means that some of the key technologies – such as those for telephone routing or exam selection – don’t need to rely on the old systems. It also means we have a very complex, fragile and interrelated set of old and new systems, the untangling of which is very complicated. Thank you for subscribing to the IRS Newswire, an IRS e-mail service. If you know someone who might want to subscribe to this mailing list, please forward this message to them so they can subscribe. This message was distributed automatically from the mailing list IRS Newswire. Please Do Not Reply To This Message. |