In a report released today, the IRS Oversight Board recommended that Congress increase the Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) FY 2010 budget by $363 million over what the Obama administration requested. The independent panel, which Congress created in 1998, cited the "IRS's archaic computer systems," a lack of adequate computer hardware and IT infrastructure, and the need for better taxpayer service programs as targets for the extra money. Unfortunately, the report comes a tad late.

On Tuesday, June 30, Vivek Kundra, the new federal Chief Information Officer, unveiled the IT dashboard, part of the newly redesigned USAspending.gov. The dashboard is actually pretty amazing, as it lets users examine every federal IT project, by agency, and shows whether each project is on schedule and on budget, along with a link to a detailed list of performance metrics for the project. It also has a tab for analysis of the data, which right now is limited to a graph of spending by agency over time and a chart showing a breakdown of the current year's budget. The site also allows third-parties to download XML versions of the data, a feature which I hope will now be standard on all government sites.

One of the trickiest aspects of tracking Recovery Act spending is a very basic one: figuring out how much money has been spent so far. Theoretically, it should be pretty easy. Find out how much the federal government has spent because of the Recovery Act, and, well, that's how much has been spent on it. By that estimate, according to Recovery.gov, we've already spent almost $53 billion on the recovery, which isn't particularly impressive.

Unfortunately, though, it's not that easy.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) released a report yesterday detailing results of an audit of the Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) financial statements of the previous fiscal year. The audit identifies several internal control and management issues not addressed by previous audits. The report contains 16 recommendations for improving internal controls at IRS.