The Internal Revenue Service is struggling to hire workers partly due to a reliance on "archaic" information technology that potential hires don't know how to use, The Washington Post reports.
The Government Accountability Office found in a report released earlier this month that the IRS uses COBOL, which it describes as an "obsolete programing language," that can cause "difficulty finding employees with such knowledge." It also notes that a "shortage of expert personnel available to maintain a critical system creates significant risk to an agency's mission."
The report states: "IRS will face mounting challenges in continuing to rely on a system that has software written in an archaic language."
About one-third of IRS applications are "outdated but still critical to day-to-day operations," according to the GAO.
"These legacy assets will continue to contribute to security risks, unmet mission needs, staffing issues, and increased costs," the report states.
Tony Reardon, president of the National Treasury Employees Union that represents IRS workers, told the Post that "a private company with tens of millions of customers would go belly up if their information technology was older than the CEO's parents. Yet that is what the IRS deals with every day."
He added that using out-of-date systems "most certainly discourages people trained in cutting-edge computer technology from pursuing a career at the IRS."
Theodore Bunker ✉
Theodore Bunker, a Newsmax writer, has more than a decade covering news, media, and politics.
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