IRS Reinforces Back-Up Systems In Wake Of September 11

by Mike Godfrey, Tax-News.com, New York

07 March 2002

John Reece, deputy commissioner for modernization and chief information officer at the IRS, told the Government Information Technology Executive Council's 16th annual Information Processing Interagency Conference that the IRS hopes to exceed its goal of 45 million online tax returns this year and said that later this year, taxpayers will be able to track the status of their tax returns online.

Mr Reece said that following the September 11th terrorist attacks, the agency had expanded backup systems at its three tax return processing centers, spending an additional $13 million provided by Congress. The disaster recovery systems were added using existing space at the centers rather than renting space at other locations, he said. Congress earmarked the money in a Defense authorization bill.

"We have to safeguard the system, otherwise we're in trouble as a country," Reece said in an interview with Federal Computer Week. "We think we've taken every measure we can...[to have] a very tight network security to protect e-filing. We've put very comprehensive protection systems into all our service centers,...[and] mail operations at the IRS are under very tight control."

After Sept. 11, Mr Reece said, officials realized that "if we lost any one of the three centers, we would be in some trouble." But now, the capacity at the three computing centers has been expanded "to the highest level in government."

"We think we've done everything that's possible to do," he said. "That's the lesson of [Sept. 11]. You have to be prepared to go out and reconstruct and continue operations."

Recommended