If you’ve been following The Picket Line for a while,
you’ll know that from time to time I check in to see how the
IRS
is doing with its database modernization effort.
As late as , the
IRS
announced that it hoped to launch the Customer Account Data Engine
(CADE) portion of the project that year, but
the launch date kept being put off: to , then
. Finally
the agency dropped the contractor they’d
been working with and decided to start over. Only portions of
CADE have ever gone live (it currently
processes the simplest 30% or so of personal income tax returns). And the
agency’s inability to stick to its software modernization schedule
is costing the government serious
money.
Now, according to Government Computer News, they’re throwing in the towel.
They’ve halted work on the project (“pending a strategy review”) “because of concerns over increasing complexities in system development.”