The IRS has successfully established a testing environment for the performance and capacity of its new Customer Account Data Engine (CADE 2), that is representative of the production environment, but it does not have all the information it needs to make a fully informed decision on the ability of the CADE 2 system to handle workloads, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration has said.
The agency is banking on CADE 2 to allow it to convert the existing weekly individual taxpayer account processing system to daily batch processing.
TIGTA found that while the testing environment the IRS has established for CADE 2 is obtaining meaningful data from its pre-production tests, that the IRS did not follow procedures to ensure that performance requirements were completely tested during the Final Integration Test Phase I.
It also said the IRS needs to develop procedures for access to and retention and maintenance of performance testing artifacts.
According to the IG, the IRS agreed with recommendations to ensure internal controls for testing performance and capacity requirements are formally and effectively implemented, including the use of integrated automated tools, when warranted by program and project size, and to improve the consistency and completeness of testing performance and capacity requirements.
It also agreed to develop procedures related to access to and retention and maintenance of testing artifacts for performance testing.
