Because of the nature of its work, the IRS is at risk of violence directed at its employees and facilities, but the agency is not making the best use of its limited resources available to assess and protect against those risks, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration says.
The IRS has performs its own risk assessments; it also pays the Federal Protective Service to conduct similar assessments at more than 600 IRS facilities but it does not fully benefit from the information they provide, a report said. “Specifically, the IRS does not use FPS risk assessments or evaluate recommendations that FPS inspectors made to improve the security at IRS facilities. As a result, IRS risk assessments sometimes do not address security concerns identified by the FPS.”
“The IRS also does not use FPS risk assessments as part of a recently instituted revalidation process. This new process, which is limited to revalidating the security of a facility based on prior IRS risk assessments, did not take into account findings included in the most recent FPS risk assessments. By using FPS assessments, the IRS could reduce duplication and improve security for IRS employees, facilities, and visiting taxpayers,” it said.
When scheduling its own risk assessments, the IRS does not consider when a facility last received an assessment from the FPS, it added. As a result, the IRS conducted 57 assessments at facilities that had already received an FPS assessment within the last two years.
Further, IRS management does not track the cost of its program, it said.
Management agreed with recommendations to develop a process to retain and review FPS risk assessments and evaluate whether the IRS can rely on FPS risk assessments of some IRS facilities and eliminate the duplicate IRS risk assessment for those facilities.
