IRS Chooses CSC to Handle Modernization
WASHINGTON -- The Internal Revenue Service picked a team of companies led by Computer Sciences Corp. to take over the agency's bungled computer-modernization program.</br></br>The multibillion-dollar project, expected to stretch over more than a decade, could become the biggest nondefense contract ever awarded by the federal government and is one of the most prestigious.</br></br>For the troubled tax collector, the award marks a sharp about-face. The IRS will rely for the first time on the private sector to update its aged computer system, abandoning numerous efforts to do so internally, even when it clearly lacked the expertise. For taxpayers, the IRS insists, the system designed by CSC of El Segundo, Calif., will finally make gaining access to personal records and reaching agency officials by phone as easy as dealing with a bank or credit-card company -- though they caution that goal will still take years to reach.</br></br>"The IRS needs to break out of its technological time warp from the 1950s and 1960s," Commissioner Charles Rossotti said in a statement. "This new partnership will help us replace archaic technology with the modern tools we need. . . . This marriage of the private and public sectors offers the best approach," he added.</br></br>Yesterday's announcement was also a huge victory for CSC -- an information-technology, consulting, and outsourcing giant -- which bested a rival group headed by Lockheed Martin Corp. of Bethesda, Md., in the yearlong competition for the project. With revenue last fiscal year of $6.6 billion, CSC is less than one-third the size of Lockheed Martin. CSC officials said the IRS award could end up as the largest contract the firm has ever won.