Review of the Enterprise E-Mail System Acquisition, September 30, 2016. Reference Number: 2016-20-080.

“The IRS purchased subscriptions for an enterprise e-mail system [Microsoft] that, as it turned out, it could not use. The purchase was made without first determining project infrastructure needs, integration requirements, business requirements, security and portal bandwidth, and whether the subscriptions were technologically feasible on the IRS enterprise. IRS Information Technology organization executives made a management decision to consider the enterprise e- mail project an upgrade to existing software and not a new development project or program. Therefore, the Information Technology organization did not follow the Internal Revenue Manual Enterprise Life Cycle guidance. The IRS authorized the $12 million purchase of subscriptions over a two-year period between June 2014 and June 2016. However, the software to be used via the purchased subscriptions was never deployed [emphasis added]. The IRS may have violated the bona fide needs rule when it purchased the subscriptions using Fiscal Year s 2014 and 2015 appropriations and did not deploy the software subscriptions in those years. In addition, t he IRS violated Federal Acquisition Regulation requirements by not using full and open competition to purchase these subscriptions…”