Conduct a thorough review of IRS information technology contracts

What has happened

1. Jun 22, 2026 Partially done

   TIGTA's own review of a defined class of IRS information-technology contracts, which is the closest thing on the record to the Quote's object examined on its own terms. Its objective was to "evaluate the exit strategies between the IRS and its cloud service providers"; it attempted to review 61 cloud-managed contracts, found the IRS could not locate 19 of them, and found that of the 42 it could review, "35 (83 percent) contracts did not fully address elements of an exit strategy". Read alongside the March 2025 audit of Inflation Reduction Act information-technology contracts — where "the IRS was unable to locate a complete list of contracts associated with the 74 legacy systems we selected" and TIGTA estimated roughly $21 million of modernization funding spent inappropriately on legacy operations and maintenance — the picture is of the reviews being done by the Inspector General rather than by the Administration, and of contract records that could not support a thorough one.

   • TIGTA Report 2026-200-028: Cloud-Managed Contracts Were Missing Specific Elements of an Exit Strategy

     Primary Other Jun 22, 2026

   • TIGTA Report 2025-208-008: Inflation Reduction Act — Contract Performance Oversight and Compliance With Expenditure Restrictions Need Improvement

     Primary Other Mar 10, 2025

2. Mar 25, 2026 Partially done

   A review of the IRS's contracts was conducted, and information technology was the largest part of it. Under the Defend the Spend initiative the IRS began evaluating its contract portfolio in February 2025: "As of January 2025, the IRS had over 3,000 active contracts. In response to the executive orders, the IRS identified 501 contracts for potential cancellation by May 2025 on its Procurement Hub … by July 2025, the IRS opted to cancel 344 of those contracts." The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration audited the result and found the IT business unit both the largest source of cancellations and the largest saving: "The Information Technology business unit had the most contracts cancelled, with 133 (41 percent) contracts of the 322 total cancelled contracts … almost $300 million in avoided costs and almost $100 million in open obligations", plus 27 of the 61 descoped contracts. `partial` and not `done` on the word *thorough*: this was a spending sweep run from a list the General Services Administration supplied, not an examination of IT contracting on its merits, TIGTA found "the actual cost savings from these actions were either limited or unknown", and it separately found the underlying records incomplete — the IRS "could not locate 19 (31 percent)" of its 61 cloud-managed contracts, and could not produce a complete contract list for a sample of 74 legacy systems.

   • TIGTA Report 2026-IS0-015: The IRS Cancelled Contracts Potentially Saving Hundreds of Millions of Dollars, but the Impact on Taxpayer Service Remains Unknown

     Primary Other Mar 25, 2026