The IRS paid over $1 million during fiscal 2011 for 13,878 aircards and 754 BlackBerrys that went unused for up to a year, the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration has said.
It also said that 2,560 IRS employees may have been assigned an aircard or BlackBerry without required management approval, and that process improvements could result in cost savings of about $5.9 million over five years.
TIGTA called on the IRS to develop processes to periodically evaluate job series that are profiled for aircards and BlackBerrys, and to ensure management approval is granted for devices based on business needs.
It further recommended that the agency establish a pooling policy for aircards, review inventory records to identify devices shown as assigned to employees without proper management approval, develop a formalized process to identify BlackBerrys with no usage, and identify whether BlackBerrys with no data use could be replaced with lower cost cellphones.
According to the IG, management agreed to establish a policy to periodically evaluate the job series profiled for aircards and BlackBerrys and agreed to formally document their process to monitor BlackBerrys with no usage, but said existing procedures were sufficient to cover the remaining recommendations.
