The IRS blew $12 million on an email service that it couldn’t use, according to an inspector general report released Friday.
The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration concluded that subscriptions to Microsoft email services wouldn’t have been compatible with the IRS’ email systems.
Furthermore, the inspector general concluded that the IRS went outside the normal acquisitions process to buy the subscriptions, classifying the purchases as an upgrade to an existing system rather than a purchase of a new one.
IRS leadership disagreed with the conclusion that it threw money away on the subscriptions. “We strongly disagree with the assertion that we wasted taxpayer dollars,” Chief Information Officer S. Gina Garza wrote in a response. The IRS thought it could achieve big savings, Garza wrote, by purchasing subscriptions rather than perpetual licenses.
The inspector general’s office, however, disagreed. “The IRS purchased $12 million in subscriptions for software that it never used (deployed) over a two-year period. We consider this a waste of taxpayer funds,” it responded.
