Keeping modernization on track

The Internal Revenue Service must replace its aging tax processing systems, but the agency can’t stop running them while it builds replacements. So the IRS builds new systems while it operates the old systems, and it tries to make sure the new systems work with the old.

The job is “like trying to change the engines on a jumbo jet while it’s in flight, and you don’t have a complete set of blueprints to know how the original engine was put together,” said W. Todd Grams, the IRS’ chief information officer from 2003 to 2006.

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