Federal Manager's Daily Report

The process the IRS follows to track whether separating employees return agency-issued laptop computers is vulnerable to errors, an IG report has said, although adding that in a random sample it conducted all laptops were returned.

The report said that some 4,100 employees left the agency in 2014 and that apart from the value of the equipment, it is important for the IRS to recover laptops from departing employees to prevent unauthorized access to taxpayer information.

The IRS has controls to verify that laptop computers are recovered when employees separate, including a process in which their managers document if laptop computers are recovered and IT office officials log their return on a separate inventory system.

However, reconciling those records is difficult, the audit said, resulting in “substantial recordkeeping problems”—it estimated that 21 percent of the records were inaccurate. For example, some records show that employees returned equipment when other records show that they never were issued it in the first place.

In response, the agency said it has updated guidance for documenting the return of that equipment and provided training, plans to provide additional guidance updates and training, and plans to develop procedures to resolve discrepancies between separation records and inventory records.