IRS Programming Mystery Continues
16th June 2020
For fiscal 2020, the IRS has received a two-year, $180 million chunk for business systems modernization.
Here’s what the commissioner says about it: “The US economy has achieved impressive increases in productivity through investments in information technology. The IRS, which is still dependent on systems installed in the 1960s and 1970s, has established the Business Systems Modernization Program to take advantage of new technology to revamp the way we do business. I firmly believe the program is on the path to succeed.”
Oops, that was Charles Rossotti, writing in a 2000 progress report. He promised real results starting in 2001. In intervening years, the IRS has in fact modernized many of its systems and procedures. Plus, soon after that report, the IRS made it successfully through the conversion to 4-digit date codes. The IRS would go on to spend billions, but none of the contractors could ever convert the Individual Master File, coded in assembler language, to modern code.
And socialists want the government to run the economy. Yeah, that’ll work.