IRS hires enterprise services exec

Linda Gilpin is the new associate chief information officer for enterprise services at the Internal Revenue Service.

Gilpin is the first person to fill the newly created position, which reports to tax agency CIO W. Todd Grams. She began working at IRS Jan. 24 after a months-long search for executives from outside the agency to fill the position. Gilpin's duties include enterprise architecture, configuration management and capacity forecasting, among other activities, an IRS spokesman said.

Grams previously told Federal Computer Week that he created the position to allow the associate CIOs for modernization and legacy information technology to focus on their core missions.

Gilpin will establish a new Enterprise Services division within the IRS' Modernization and IT Services division in two phases. During the first phase, which should be complete by the end of this month, the first wave of functions previously performed within modernization and existing IT services -- including configuration and demand management -- will transfer over. About 30 employees will transfer along with those functions.

During the second phase, about 250 additional employees will move to enterprise services, which will expand to include enterprise life cycle management and systems engineering. The process should be completed in 2006, the IRS spokesman said.

The tax agency is taking a greater role in systems integration, enterprise architecture and program management following Congress' decision to appropriate $80 million less than the IRS requested for modernization efforts in fiscal 2005.

Gilpin comes to the IRS directly from a 12-year gig at systems integrator American Management Systems. She is at least the second executive to join the tax agency from AMS, which was co-founded by former IRS Commissioner Charles Rossotti.

Gilpin was most recently vice president and director of the AMS customer quality management program, where she spearheaded a corporatewide operational risk management program.

She holds a bachelor of arts from Rice University, and she is a certified Project Management Institute Project Management Professional.