IRS Appoints New Privacy Advocate

by Mike Godfrey, Tax-News.com, Washington

20 August 2003

The Internal Revenue Service has announced this week the appointment of attorney Maya A. Bernstein to the post of Privacy Advocate who will be responsible for developing policies to protect taxpayer and IRS employee privacy and ensuring widespread awareness of privacy rights.

“We are fortunate indeed to have someone with Maya’s level of expertise directing the IRS’s privacy office,” commented David R. Williams, Chief of the Communications and Liaison division, of which the Office of the Privacy Advocate is part. “As technology enables the IRS to modernize, privacy becomes an ever more important issue.”

Bernstein has specialist expertise in information policy and electronic commerce including laws surrounding data protection, privacy compliance and electronic signature law. She comes to the IRS from her previous role as an information policy and administrative law consultant and also spent nine years as a Senior Policy Analyst at the Office of Management and Budget reviewing a wide variety of agency regulations such as the Administrative Procedure Act, Regulatory Flexibility Act, Paperwork Reduction Act and the policy of the President.

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