IRS Customer Service

Improving customer service at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is a priority for both the agency and Congress. GAO found that IRS' ambitious strategy to improve customer service shows promise but could be improved. As of January 1999, IRS has established priorities, reduced the number of initiatives to a manageable level, aligned them with its strategic goals and objectives, and assigned accountability for specific initiatives. IRS has also improved its ability to monitor and track individual initiatives by providing on-line access to its database and by asking management to enter information on milestones and completion dates. IRS' strategy could be enhanced by having information on expected costs and benefits, milestones and completion dates, and performance measures. IRS has already linked the initiatives to its strategic goals and objectives and has begun to collect information on timeliness. However, IRS has not determined how much the initiatives are likely to cost, what benefits are expected to be achieved, and how the results will be measured. The Taxpayer Service and Treatment Improvement Program database could serve as a tool not only to monitor implementation but also to facilitate effective management and oversight.

GAO noted that: (1) IRS' strategy for managing the implementation of its customer service initiatives shows promise but could be improved; (2) IRS' basic approach was to establish a central office, the Taxpayer Service and Treatment Improvement Program (TSI), and form a high-level steering committee, chaired by the Commissioner, to oversee the implementation of improvement initiatives that were being carried out by many different IRS and Department of the Treasury offices; (3) TSI and the steering committee were established in January 1998; (4) in its early months, TSI had problems carrying out its responsibilities; (5) officials attributed most of the problems to the large number of potential initiatives on the agenda; (6) by January 1999, TSI and the steering committee had taken steps to: (a) prioritize the initiatives, reducing the number to 157 primary initiatives; (b) align these initiatives to IRS' newly established strategic goals and objectives; and (c) assign accountability for their completion to specific executives; (7) TSI provided offices involved in day-to-day implementation of individual initiatives with on-line access to the central information database it had developed to categorize and monitor progress on the initiatives; (8) IRS could further improve its customer service management strategy; (9) by January 1999, TSI had identified a need for information on milestones and completion dates for each primary initiative and asked offices implementing individual initiatives to input this information into its database; (10) however, TSI had not assessed the need for information on: (a) expected costs and benefits; and (b) performance measures; (11) managers in a few of the offices implementing initiatives GAO reviewed had documented all these types of information on their own, but this information was not being used by IRS' leadership; (12) as past GAO reports have shown, not only do high-performing, results-oriented organizations set priorities, align activities with mission-related goals and objectives, and assign accountability, but they also develop and use information to monitor progress and evaluate results; (13) information on costs, benefits, milestones and completion dates, and performance measures is critical to successfully managing for results; (14) although it can be difficult to develop, this information provides agencies with tools they can use to monitor and evaluate how efficiently and effectively programs are achieving their purposes; and (15) it is important to help determine whether public resources have been used to achieve the purposes for which they were appropriated.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

Director: Team: Phone: