IRS taps new CIO

The IRS has selected a new chief information officer, Nextgov/FCW has learned.

Rajiv Uppal — currently the director of the Office of Information Technology at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, where he also serves as the acting chief information officer — has been tapped to take over the post.

It’s the latest shakeup in the tax agency’s CIO shop, which has seen its leadership change a few times in recent months. 

In March, the agency’s previous CIO Nancy Sieger — who served as the acting and later permanent CIO since 2019 — moved to the chief technology officer position at the Treasury Department. 

Treasury’s deputy CIO Jeff King subbed in as acting IRS CIO for a few months before moving back to his Treasury post at the end of June, leaving the IRS chief technology officer, Kaschit Pandya, in the acting position.

Uppal will be at the helm of tech at an agency in the midst of a digital transformation with the funding boost authorized under the Inflation Reduction Act. 

The tax agency has plans to improve taxpayers services, use data and analytics to audit the wealthiest Amercians and corporations, modernize decades-old core infrastructure and more. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen praised progress on digitization at the agency earlier this week as “significant and far-reaching” in its impact, but also warned against recent proposals to cut IRS funding as detrimental to important work.

Uppal has been at CMS for over five years, according to his Linkedin. He got his start in government on a U.S. Digital Service team in the Department of Homeland Security, following several years in the private sector. 

Uppal was recently awarded a Meritorious Executive Presidential Rank Award this year — given annually as a recognition for civil servants — for his work at CMS. 

IRS provided no immediate comment for this story.