CSC focused on IRS modernization

Despite recent troubles, the best of the Internal Revenue Service's massive modernization effort is yet to come, the chief operating officer of the IRS modernization's lead contractor said today.

Every major program has bumps, Michael Laphen, Computer Sciences Corp.'s president and chief operating officer, said during a meeting with reporters. "It's really a question of how you handle the bumps."

CSC, he said, has a reputation for working through these issues with its clients, as it is doing with IRS.

IRS officials have commissioned a series of studies to determine what has gone wrong with the multibillion-dollar modernization program as part of an effort to determine how to get the long-troubled program back on track.

"If I was in [IRS Commissioner Mark Everson's] shoes, I probably would have done the same thing," Laphen said.

IRS officials have received a verbal report on those studies and are expecting the written report soon.

"I think it is fair to say that they were all constructive inputs," he said. "I think it is also fair to say that it was unanimous that the programs should continue. There are some things we can do differently and should do differently. We are currently working with the IRS to make those changes to our approach."

Laphen refused to specify the changes or findings because Everson is going to detail those when the written report is completed.

CSC and the IRS have already made some changes, he noted.

"We are going to work harder on getting more content-related people involved with the program," he said, meaning people who understand the functionality of the existing systems and how a streamlined process would work. "One of the challenges both IRS and we have is getting people who really understand some of the nuts and bolts of the IRS legacy systems," he said.

"What we want to look at with business process transformation is, 'What are the better ways of doing these processes?'"

Laphen noted that the IRS modernization is an enormous undertaking — one of the largest such initiatives of its kind anywhere in the world, either in the public or private sector. Furthermore one of the biggest challenges is that the IRS and CSC have to maintain the antiquated legacy systems while implementing modernized systems.

IRS officials expect the results of the four studies by the end of the month and plan to announce a new strategy by the end of December.

Despite some successes, the agency's Business Systems Modernization program, in its fifth year, has been plagued by missed deadlines and cost overruns. IRS officials plan to spend more than $429 million on the program in fiscal 2004.

CSC is the lead contractor on what was expected to be a 15-year program.