IRS Moves Ahead with Plans for Upgrade

Not wasting any time finding ways to spend the $432 million Congress allocated to the IRS for purposes of getting in step with the times, the Internal Revenue Service announced plans [1] to spend approximately $100 million on upgrading its Internet presence.

Software manufacturer Vignette Corp. has been awarded the contract to upgrade the IRS Web sites, and plans to spend approximately three years on the project which will include providing software that will track, tag, and manage content on the IRS Web pages.

Vignette has hired International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) to host two of the IRS Web sites. One of sites will be for IRS employees, the other will be for professional tax preparers. Vignette has also developed plans with consulting firm Accenture Ltd. to overhaul the IRS's public Web site.

Last week the IRS announced it had partnered with PeopleSoft [2] to provide customer relationship management software which will ultimately enable tax preparers to access their client's tax records via the Internet.

The entire IRS upgrade plan is expected to take between 10 and 15 years to complete.