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Improvements Are Needed to Effectively Provide Oversight and Management of the Interagency Agreement With the National Archives and Records Administration
Why did we do this audit?
To see how well the IRS manages its agreement for storing, handling, and retrieving taxpayer paper files. The IRS and the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) have an interagency agreement that states NARA will provide records storage, access, and disposition services to the IRS. As of March 2023, the IRS stored approximately 5.8 million cubic feet of paper records at 17 NARA Federal Records Centers.
What did we find?
The IRS pays NARA for this service. In October 2020, NARA introduced new rates which increased the IRS's monthly costs by $900K. Despite Department of the Treasury guidance, the IRS did not discuss and negotiate the terms & conditions or the cost with NARA and did not conduct any cost analysis to see if it was reasonable.
Due to Pandemic restrictions, NARA's storage facilities were either closed or operating at a limited capacity from March 2020 to March 2022. This resulted in a significant backlog of the storage and retrieval of paper records. However, the IRS did not monitor or evaluate NARA's performance. Although IRS officials stated that they were unaware of any delays in obtaining paper records timely, five of the top six requesters of paper records during 2022 stated that it generally takes between two to eight months to receive requested documents.
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