On February 17, 2022, we notified the Director, Submission Processing, Wage and Investment Division, of our concerns with participant applications not being timely processed. IVES Program guidelines require that applications to participate in the IVES Program be processed by the IVES Headquarters office. However, we found procedures to process IVES applications were inefficient and undocumented. For example, procedures did not ensure that the IVES sites were doing preliminary checks of the participant applications to determine if they were accurately completed (e.g., ensuring that a signature was present) and there were no measurable goals or policies for completing the applications in a timely manner. We recommended that IRS management immediately determine the backlog of participant applications and develop a plan to address the backlog of applications.