IRS names first chief technology officer

The Internal Revenue Service today announced that it appointed Terence Milholland as the agency’s chief technology officer, a new position. Milholland, who has almost 30 years of information technology experience in the private sector, started his new position today, said an IRS spokeswoman. The CTO position will report directly to the deputy commissioner for operations support, The Modernization and Information Technology Services division, including its current chief information officer, will report to the CTO, the spokeswoman said. As the CTO, Milholland will be responsible for all aspects of the systems that operate the nation’s tax infrastructure. He will oversee the 7,000-person organization that maintains the 400 systems that are involved in processing the 200 million tax returns annually, said Douglas Shulman, IRS commissioner. “Terry has a proven track record of delivery in large and complex technology environments,” he said. Most recently, Milholland was the executive vice president and CTO for Visa International. Before that, he was CIO and CTO for Electronic Data Systems Corp. and, before that, CIO for Boeing. Milholland received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Maryland and a master of science degree from George Washington University.