{"id":134114,"date":"2026-03-24T20:10:40","date_gmt":"2026-03-24T23:10:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tech.einnews.com\/article\/901534998"},"modified":"2026-03-24T20:10:40","modified_gmt":"2026-03-24T23:10:40","slug":"irs-faces-ai-skills-gaps-after-pushing-tech-talent-out-watchdog-finds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/2026\/03\/24\/irs-faces-ai-skills-gaps-after-pushing-tech-talent-out-watchdog-finds\/","title":{"rendered":"IRS faces AI skills gaps after pushing tech talent out, watchdog finds"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The IRS wants to deploy artificial intelligence, but workforce reductions that hit tech teams mean the agency has capacity gaps that could impact its ability to do so, according to a new report<\/a> from Congress\u2019 watchdog, the Government Accountability Office.<\/p>\n

As the Trump administration sought to downsize the federal government last year, it pushed out<\/a> nearly 20,000 technology, data and telecommunications employees. <\/p>\n

The IRS shed about 40% of its IT staff and lost about 80% of its executives last year, the agency’s chief information officer said<\/a> last month, potentially complicating<\/a> its modernization goals. <\/p>\n

After ousting dozens of staff charged with designing, implementing and overseeing AI, the tax agency has gaps in necessary AI skills that officials say could be hard to close. The IRS also doesn\u2019t have a plan to fix the problem, GAO says.<\/p>\n

The agency\u2019s research, applied analytics and statistics unit \u2014 one of two main AI hubs at the IRS, helmed by the agency\u2019s AI lead \u2014 lost 63 employees who supported the agency\u2019s AI efforts as of May last year. <\/p>\n

Some staff retired or resigned. The agency placed others on administrative leave. Last March, the tax agency put its IT shop\u2019s head of AI on administrative leave, along with about 50 other IT executives.<\/p>\n

The IRS also fired generative AI experts that were still in their probationary period last spring. As in other agencies, these new hires were early targets for removals last year because they have weaker protections than tenured civil servants.<\/p>\n

Some workers have since returned to the agency, but many of those have been reassigned to other work at the IRS because of attrition that created gaps elsewhere. <\/p>\n

In August, Nextgov\/FCW <\/em>reported<\/a> that the IRS was abandoning planned layoffs and looking to rehire staff to fill gaps in \u201cmission critical expertise.\u201d<\/p>\n

Three-quarters of the staff on the AI governance team at the IRS have also left. The agency\u2019s AI team, overseen by the chief technology officer, had lost half of its staff by May 2025, before the office itself was disbanded.<\/p>\n

Some of the tax agency\u2019s AI deployments may have to stop because of these staffing constraints, GAO says \u2014 despite the Trump administration\u2019s pro-AI stance and efforts to push the use of the technology across the government. The watchdog noted that the IRS also risks deploying AI systems without the resources to make sure that the technology is used responsibly.<\/p>\n

One IRS official told GAO that the IRS may no longer use an AI model focused on prioritizing tax returns for audit, because the program may no longer have the staff to conduct the audits. <\/p>\n

With fewer enforcement staff, and therefore fewer audits, the IRS will have less data on audit outcomes to train new AI models or retune their existing ones. <\/p>\n

\u201cWithout quality AI models, IRS officials said the agency may have diminished capability to improve IRS\u2019s ability to collect revenue and reduce the number of audits that do not result in a tax change,\u201d GAO wrote.<\/p>\n

The watchdog recommended that the IRS develop a plan to address skills gaps, which the agency agreed with, although GAO says the tax agency doesn\u2019t yet have a plan in place to fix the problem.<\/p>\n

The IRS is also currently under a hiring freeze, and officials told GAO that open jobs will be hard to fill because of the nature of the terminations, in-office work requirements and terminated individuals finding other jobs.<\/p>\n

<\/a><\/strong> <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

… , but workforce reductions that hit tech<\/span> teams mean the agency has capacity … pushed out nearly 20,000 technology<\/span>, data and telecommunications employees.\u00c2\u00a0 The IRS … efforts to push the use of the technology<\/span> across the government. The watchdog noted that …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-134114","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","wpcat-1-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134114","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134114"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134114\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134114"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134114"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/new7.shop\/zerocostfreehost\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134114"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}