Summary
The Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) effort to modernize its tax administrative and financial systems--Business Systems Modernization (BSM)--has suffered delays and cost overruns due to a number of factors, including inadequate development and management of requirements. Recognizing these deficiencies, IRS created a Requirements Management Office (RMO) to establish policies and procedures for managing requirements. GAO's objectives were to assess (1) whether the office has established adequate requirements development and management policies and procedures and (2) whether BSM has effectively used requirements development and management practices for key systems development efforts.
BSM does not yet have adequate policies and procedures in place to guide its systems modernization projects in developing and managing requirements. In January 2006, the RMO developed a set of draft policies that address some key areas of requirements development and management; these policies are to serve as interim guidance while the final policies and processes are being developed. At the conclusion of GAO's review, the RMO also provided a high-level plan that includes milestones for completing these policies. Since critical BSM projects continue to be pursued and completion of the policies and procedures is not expected until March 2007, it is critical that BSM immediately implement the draft policies and continue to develop the final policies. As a result of the lack of policies and procedures, the one ongoing project--Modernized e-File (MeF)--and the two completed projects--Filing and Payment Compliance (F&PC) and Customer Account Data Engine (CADE)--GAO reviewed did not consistently follow disciplined practices for systems development and management. For example, all three projects had a key element of managing requirements--a change management process that requires approvals and impact assessments to be completed when there are changes to requirements--but none met all of the practices needed for effective requirements management. In addition, two projects did not have a clear, consistent way to elicit (gather) requirements, two did not have fully documented requirements, and two could not produce fully traceable requirements (i.e., the requirements could not be tracked through development and testing), which is another key element of managing requirements. Unless IRS takes the steps needed to develop and institutionalize disciplined requirements development and management processes and implements draft policies in the interim to cover key areas of requirements development and management, it will continue to face risks, including cost overruns, schedule delays, and performance shortfalls.
Recommendations
Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change
from "In process" to "Implemented" or "Not implemented" based on our follow up work.
Director:
Team:
Phone:
David A. Powner
Government Accountability Office: Information Technology
No phone on record
Recommendations for Executive Action
Recommendation: To improve the requirements development and management policies and practices of the IRS's BSM, the Commissioner of Internal Revenue should direct the Associate Chief Information Officer for BSM to ensure that BSM completes the delivery of policies and procedures for requirements development and management as planned. The policies and procedures should fully describe the processes, include a minimum set of activities required for each project, and provide detailed procedures for each of the key areas of requirements elicitation, documentation, verification and validation, and management. As part of this effort, the policies and procedures should specifically include the following: (1) a standardized process for the elicitation of requirements that ensures that projects fully investigate the requirements needed for a specific system, including gathering requirements from all relevant users and stakeholders; (2) a standardized process for the documentation of requirements that ensures full documentation of the baseline requirements; (3) a process for ensuring formal peer reviews are planned and completed for key products; (4) guidance on tracking cost and schedule impacts of changes to requirements for all projects; and (5) guidance on establishing and maintaining full bidirectional requirements traceability.
Agency Affected: Department of the Treasury: Internal Revenue Service
Status: In process
Comments: When we confirm what actions the agency has taken in response to this recommendation, we will provide updated information.
Recommendation: To improve the requirements development and management policies and practices of the IRS's BSM, and since BSM has ongoing projects that are developing and managing requirements and the development of new policies and procedures is not scheduled to be complete until March 2007, the Commissioner of Internal Revenue should direct the Associate Chief Information Officer for BSM to immediately implement its draft policies while the final policies and procedures are being developed.
Agency Affected: Department of the Treasury: Internal Revenue Service
Status: In process
Comments: When we confirm what actions the agency has taken in response to this recommendation, we will provide updated information.
