IRS behind on identification cards

The IRS will fall short of its goal of getting all staff identification cards to allow them into federal offices, according to a new inspector general report.

Treasury’s inspector general said that the IRS won’t fully implement electronic card access to its facilities until at least 2018 — three years after the Treasury Department’s deadline.

IRS officials have chalked the delays up to a funding crunch, an issue they have blamed for falling behind on other priorities. Either way, the Treasury inspector general said the delay could be costly for the IRS.

As long as the program isn’t implemented, “IRS facilities, networks, and information systems are at an increased risk of unauthorized access,” said J. Russell George, the tax administration inspector general.

{mosads}The presidential directive requiring agencies to give staffers cards allowing them access to facilities is now a decade old.

That directive has proved to be a challenge for much of the federal government, with the Office of Management and Budget saying last year that no agency had fully implemented it. 

The IRS has given so-called personal identity verification cards to roughly 85 percent of its eligible staffers and contractors. That comes after the agency has already spent $110 million to implement the program, with another $19 million budgeted for fiscal 2014.

But staffers and contractors only have to use those cards to get inside at roughly one in five — 130 out of 625 IRS facilities — the inspector general found.

The IRS has decided not to require card access at 134 facilities, insisting those buildings might be closed in the future or don’t require that level of security. The IRS won’t finish upgrading the other 361 facilities until at least 2018, and will do so only if the funding is available.

Still, the IRS also agreed that implementing the program should be a priority.