Watchdog: IRS Declined to Patch Known Weakness Ahead of Tax Day Crash

NextGov: Officials at the IRS might have avoided a Tax Day hardware failure this year but opted to stick with what they had rather than take a chance on an “unstable” patch, according to an audit by the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration released Monday.

On April 17—Tax Day 2018—a then-18-month-old piece of hardware supporting a lynchpin of the agency’s data storage systems experienced a caching issue, causing a cascade of failures that affected 59 different digital systems. IRS employees were able to get all systems back online within 11 hours, but the agency decided to extend the filing period another day to account for the confusion and loss of availability.

Read article

i360Gov Newsletters

The most significant government policy, business, and technology news and analysis delivered to your inbox.

Subscribe Now