Open Recommendations

The Chief Information Officer should timely remediate or mitigate all vulnerabilities in accordance with IRS policies.

The Chief Information Officer should ensure that systems are in place to reconcile the temporary and unknown repositories to verify that assets are assigned to an established group.

The Chief Information Officer should ensure that systems are in place to reconcile duplicate accounting of assets in the repository.

The Chief Information Officer should evaluate the temporary and unknown repositories to establish ownership of assets.

The Chief Information Officer should resolve configuration compliance settings in accordance with Federal and IRS policies.

The Chief Information Officer and the Chief, Direct File, should ensure that Direct File developers document their test plan with traceability to test types, test cases, and test results.

The Chief Human Capital Officer should create and implement a systemic fix to ensure that Section 1204 managers completing their quarterly certifications are automatically routed to the appropriate SharePoint page(s) when their responses necessitate additional information reporting about potential ROTER violations.

The Chief Human Capital Officer should perform an annual reconciliation to ensure that: 1) all Section 1204 employees assigned the yearly Section 1204 mandatory briefing are accounted for in the yearly Section 1204 population and 2) the entire Section 1204 population has been assigned the annual Section 1204 mandatory briefing.

The Director, Collection Policy, SB/SE Division, should revise the Internal Revenue Manual (IRM) to require revenue officers to check their mail and faxes for any CDP levy hearing requests prior to issuing levies.

The Director, Collection Policy, SB/SE Division, should provide training to remind revenue officers that for manually created balance due modules within the ICS, they must manually verify the CDP levy notice was timely issued and that the modules are not part of an open CDP hearing prior to levy. In addition, revise the IRM to require that revenue officers document the ICS history with confirmation that required notices were provided prior to issuing a levy on a manually created balance due module.

The Director, Field Collection, SB/SE Division, should ensure that the taxpayers who were not given the opportunity for a CDP hearing are given their CDP rights, if appropriate; and obtain authorization to retain any improper levy proceeds or refund the proceeds to the taxpayer.

The Director, Field Collection, SB/SE Division, should ensure that the instances identified in this report that are associated with unauthorized representatives receiving CDP levy notices due to various revenue officer errors are discussed with the responsible employees and their managers so that they can protect taxpayer’s rights and prevent unauthorized disclosures. These employee’s managers should consider the failure to observe written regulations, orders, rules, or procedures that result in the violation of improper disclosure of tax return information when evaluating employees’ performance or for misconduct if such action on the part of the employee is intentional.

Establish procedures for Appeals officers to verify and document, as part of the law and administrative review, whether any prohibited levy action was taken on the subject tax modules for which a taxpayer requests a levy CDP hearing.

Establish procedures for Appeals managers conducting case reviews to specifically review the law and administrative review performed by the Appeals officer to determine if it was conducted appropriately.

The Chief, IRS Independent Office of Appeals, should require for CDP hearings that prohibited levies are recorded in the Case Activity Reports.

The Commissioner, Large Business and International Division, should develop a process to **************************************************************************** *************************************************************************************************** *****************************************************.

The Chief Taxpayer Experience Officer should oversee all customer satisfaction surveys to help ensure that the IRS follows existing Federal guidance for tracking survey feedback.

The Chief Taxpayer Experience Officer should collaborate with division management to ensure that the concerns raised by the survey results are: 1) shared Service-wide; 2) considered in system and process improvements; and 3) evaluated to determine the effects of the improvements on the customer experience, including customer satisfaction.

The Chief Taxpayer Experience Officer should coordinate with division management to administer surveys on consistent delivery and reporting schedules throughout the IRS, when applicable.

The Chief Taxpayer Experience Officer should coordinate with division management to monitor and improve survey quality to reduce nonresponse bias as well as ensure that taxpayers have access to customer satisfaction surveys.

The Commissioner, TE/GE Division, should assess evolving technologies and customer preferences for survey delivery.

The Chief Taxpayer Experience Officer should collaborate with division management to develop and track customer satisfaction survey goals to reflect the priorities outlined in the Balanced Performance Measurement System.

The Chief Taxpayer Experience Officer should coordinate with division management to establish an enterprise-wide approach to provide an easy, direct way for taxpayers to alert management about unprofessional IRS employee behavior.

The IRS Human Capital Officer should require the ongoing periodic quality review of contractor employee separation actions performed by the CORs to ensure that they 1) timely prepare and submit Form 14604, 2) complete all steps specified on the Form, and 3) document all required separation steps in the SCC record.

The Chief Information Officer, in conjunction with the Chief Operating Officer, should implement more prohibitive controls for allowing users to ******************* ****************