Wasteful spending by IRS is cited in report

The Internal Revenue Service paid a contractor $188,000 to provide one worker to perform clerical tasks in an 11-month period.

The contract was an example of financial waste cited in a government report Thursday on the tax agency’s involvement in a new program ordered by President Bush in 2004 to develop more-secure identification cards for federal workers.

The Treasury Department’s inspector general for tax administration said the IRS also needlessly spent almost $2 million on a computer security system that the tax agency now doesn’t plan to use.

The IRS was responsible for developing and implementing the program for providing secure ID cards to about 150,000 employees at the Treasury Department. The projected cost of the Treasury program was put at $421 million over 14 years.

To provide one person for a clerical support job updating contact lists, assigning and tracking equipment and processing trip reports, a contractor was paid $128 per hour worked by the temporary employee.

Auditors for the inspector general’s office were told by IRS program managers that the work could have been done by an employee with a ranking of GS-7, eligible for a starting salary of around $38,000, plus benefits. Neither the contractor nor temporary worker were identified.

Of the $30 million the IRS has committed so far for the ID card project, about $3.5 million was spent on acquisitions that should have been avoided, the report said.