The new information system has not been entirely implemented in the meaning that it still in the stages of control and testing. Once its implementation has been completed, the FMIS is expected to perform the following tasks:

Support the financial audit conducted by the General Accountability Office

Prepare the financial statements of the Internal Revenue Service

Prepare reports for trending on operational impact

Feed the BPMS (the Business Performance Management System), the CCW (Compliance Data Warehouse) and the CAP (Custodial Accounting Project)

Retrieve the information necessary for the Federal Payment Levy Program (FPLP), and finally

Analyze and report on modules with credit balances belonging to frozen credit processes (Website of the Internal Revenue Service, 2008)

The GAO is a powerful organization, with a high role in the American Congress. While their progresses through the recent years are significant, they tend to disagree in saying the same about the Internal Revenue Service. With the completion of their annual audits, the General Accountability Office has stated that the IRS is still a long way from becoming a highly organized entity. "For years, the Internal Revenue Service has had poor internal controls over financial reporting, and this past fiscal year was no exception" says an article in the CFO Magazine. Sarah Johnson, the author of this article points out other findings of the GOA relative to the IRS. A relevant one is that the governmental institution has indeed managed to register some improvements throughout the past recent years and is therefore given the adherent credit. These improvements refer mainly to dealing with the problems they were facing in terms of financial management. The efforts in this direction were concentrated to increasing the quality of the control over unpaid tax collections. Doubt still...

Also, the agency has been blamed for being unable to protect the safety of the information collected and the confidentiality of the data. In this order of ideas, Johnson points out that the General Accountability Office has made 147 recommendations for the IRS throughout the recent years, and out of these, more than half referred solely to improvements in information security.
The problem then resides in that the IRS, in the opinion of the GAO, is unable to properly handle data. And not only this, they have proven incapable of implementing the suggestions for improvement made by the General Accountability Office. Foremost, the GAO seems to think that the future of the organization in terms of improvements in rather questionable. In this instance then, they fear that while the IRS will strive to register operational progresses, their endeavours will only make it even more difficult for the General Accountability Office to monitor and control the IRS' developments and operations. "The IRS "did not provide reasonable assurance that losses, misstatements, and noncompliance with laws and regulations material in relation to the financial statements would be prevented or detected on a timely basis," wrote the GAO" (Johnson, 2008).

References

Johnson, S., 2008, GAO to IRS: Get Control of Yourself, CFO, http://www.cfo.com/article.cfm/12592210?f=searchlast accessed on December 10, 2008

Website of the Internal Revenue Service, http://www.irs.govlast accessed on December 10, 2008

Website of the U.S. Government Accountability Office, http://www.gao.gov/last accessed on December 10, 2008