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Man: Taxpayer First Act. How we got here.
The world of taxpayers and stakeholders has changed,
as have their expectations.
Technology has changed, and so has our workforce.
Our taxpayer base is more diverse
than it was 20 years ago, and so are IRS partners
and external stakeholders.
Previous strategies, improvements, and legislation
have brought us to this point.
The Taxpayer First Act was introduced last July
by Congress and gives us an opportunity
to shape our future.
It's an opportunity to fundamentally change
the way we do business by shifting
to a more taxpayer-centered model.
There are 44 total provisions.
Though the Taxpayer First Act owns the development
of recommendations for three of them --
customer service strategy,
modernization of IRS organizational structure,
and comprehensive training strategy --
the Taxpayer First Act gives the IRS
an incredible opportunity to make significant improvements
for taxpayers and employees alike
in the way that our organization serves taxpayers
through enhanced agency collaboration,
remodeled training, expanded digital services,
among many other initiatives.
The Taxpayer First Act will be delivering these strategies
in a comprehensive report to Congress
for their review in December 2020.
TFA includes a provision that mandates the IRS
to develop and implement a multi-year strategic plan
for the agency's information technology needs.
The IT strategic plan will help the IRS maintain
a unified vision, goals, and objectives.
It will align with the agency's strategic plan
and our approach to modernize the taxpayer experience,
employee training, and our organizational structure.
These strategies will ensure we stay on the path
to modernization.
The IT strategic plan will align with the TFA's future direction
of the IRS and technology needed to improve
the taxpayer experience.
The plan will be different from the integrated
modernization business plan released in April 2019.
While the modernization plan included tactical deliverables
planned over the next six years, the IT strategic plan
will focus on the IRS as a whole
and its information technology workforce.
Our mission statement is intended to instill pride
and confidence in our nation's tax system
by developing a strategy for continuously improving
the taxpayer experience and an organizational structure
that enables seamless taxpayer interactions.
Our vision is to work collaboratively,
while the Taxpayer First Act will re-imagine our organization
to enable a service-wide focus on providing
a high-quality taxpayer experience for all.
As we pursue our mission and vision
through our guiding principles, our focus will be
coordination and integration, listen, learn, and then design,
build an excitement
through regular transparent communications,
embrace accountability through results.
The TFA Office is responsible for implementing
certain Taxpayer First Act provisions
while coordinating service-wide implementation efforts
for the remaining provisions.
We want to walk you through TFAO's high-level timeline,
including our past accomplishments
and next steps.
In fiscal year 2019, fourth quarter,
we established the TFAO by selecting executive leaders
with experience and passion for driving transformation
in the IRS to lead the team and candidates
from various spots and diverse professional backgrounds
to support.
In fiscal year 2020 first quarter
through fiscal year 2020 second quarter,
we kicked off the stakeholder feedback phase,
in which we collected feedback and ideas
for improving customers' interactions with the IRS,
employees' training procedures,
and the current organizational structure
so that we had a robust understanding
of the IRS' challenges and ways to improve
that would then inform the three TFA strategies.
Later in this presentation, we'll share more
about the wide array of stakeholders we engaged with.
In fiscal year 2020 third quarter,
we primarily focused on developing our recommendations
for the strategies themselves, all the while continuing
to maintain engagement with stakeholders
and host outreach activities.
We're currently entering
the fiscal year 2020 fourth quarter,
where we intend to share what we recommend
with our stakeholders for additional feedback
and input before finalization in the report to Congress.
Our original due date
was fiscal year 2020 third quarter, July,
however due to COVID-19 and the shift in priorities
of the agency and all federal government,
our new due date is December 2020.
Our next steps are to finalize our recommendations
for the report and conduct several iterations of review
ahead of submission to Congress in December 2020.
One of our guiding principles has been
to listen, learn, then design.
IRS operates at an unparalleled level of scale
by servicing and interacting
with millions of Americans every year.
Given our organization's reach and complexity,
we felt there was no other way to go about crafting
these monumental strategies, except to start
by listening to our various stakeholders
before jumping into development.
Audiences/sources that helped us identify challenges
and potential solutions include customer satisfaction surveys,
taxpayer advocacy panel, online services surveys from taxpayers,
tax practitioners' e-file parties,
reporting agents, payroll industry,
TFA forum from practitioners.