The policy items focus on Trump administration priority areas that lawmakers have worked to tackle previously through various legislation: protecting children, safeguarding American communities and small businesses, promoting intellectual property rights, supporting free speech, enabling innovation, and pre-empting state AI laws.

That last item, in particular, has faced a high-profile and tumultuous legislative journey as Republicans have attempted to limit states from setting their own AI laws. Last year, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, championed legislation that would’ve banned states’ abilities to pass AI laws for 10 years, but that measure was decisively shut down by a 99-1 vote. 

The White House said Friday in a release that the new framework “can succeed only if it is applied uniformly across the United States. A patchwork of conflicting state laws would undermine American innovation and our ability to lead in the global AI race.”

“The Federal government is uniquely positioned to set a consistent national policy that enables us to win the AI race and deliver its benefits to the American people, while effectively addressing the policy challenges that accompany this transformative technology,” said the White House release. “The Administration looks forward to working with Congress in the coming months to turn this framework into legislation that the President can sign.”

The framework’s publication comes after Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., introduced a draft AI framework that would codify into law President Donald Trump’s December 2025 executive order meant to rein in states’ rights around AI. 

Beyond state preemption, the new framework largely looks to strike a balance between light-touch federal regulation in support of innovation and protecting Americans from potential harms related to the technology — from things like censorship, burdensome energy costs and copyright infringement to AI-generated child sexual abuse material.

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Appearing before the House Appropriations Legislative Branch Subcommittee, Orice Williams Brown was asked by Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., how the agency has handled the departures of “almost 200 employees” across the GAO’s workforce following funding fights on Capitol Hill last year.

The GAO, which avoided a proposed 40% cut to essentially remain flat year over year, dealt with separations throughout the organization, Brown said, covering everyone from “analysts that directly do the work” to “operations and support across the agency.”

“One area particularly hard hit has been our Information Technology Group,” she continued. “They’ve lost a fair number of resources, so it has an impact on the organization. We worked really hard to try to minimize that impact.”

More than 120 employees took a VERA (Voluntary Early Retirement Authority) or VSIP (Voluntary Separation Incentive Payment) during the watchdog’s first round of offers, while another 45 or so have put in an application for the latest round, Brown told lawmakers. The departures have forced the watchdog to “make tradeoffs and reposition ourselves” to best meet Congress’ needs, Brown added. 

The IT losses present undeniable challenges. Jennifer Franks, director of the GAO’s Center for Enhanced Cybersecurity, Information Technology & Cybersecurity Team, said in an interview with FedScoop on Thursday at the Elastic Public Sector Summit that keeping the infrastructure stable, modernizing systems and providing “evolutionary services” are the IT shop’s top priorities — but it’s no easy feat after the loss of critical staff.

“We are trying to upgrade our systems and our technologies,” Franks said. “We are rolling out AI. We are advancing our security systems, utilizing zero trust and adding some additional policies and procedures to enhance our protections because of the evolution of the escalating threats around the globe — while also still answering … requests from Congress, with a reduction of staff. So we’re moving very fast with the reduction of folks, every single day.”

In an email to FedScoop later Thursday, Franks reiterated that workforce changes have had “a strong impact” on the GAO, but the watchdog’s “teams have stayed focused, adaptable, and committed to the mission to support Congress.”

“We’re continuing to push forward on modernizing our internal IT environment to better support our staff so that we can deliver work for Congress and meet performance goals,” Franks said. “These efforts haven’t stopped just because resources are tight—it has just required us to be more thoughtful and strategic in how we move and prioritize.”

Ahead of Brown’s congressional testimony Wednesday, the GAO released its fiscal 2027 budget request. The watchdog seeks $860 million, a 5.9% increase from fiscal 2026. The budget would support 3,210 full-time equivalents, per a GAO press release, a 4.2% year-over-year decrease and a 10.2% decline — roughly 450 positions — since the end of fiscal 2024.

“I know you’re trying to and … doing more with less,” DeLauro told Brown. “There’s no question in my mind.”

Brown assured lawmakers that despite the increased demands from Congress alongside fewer resources, the GAO remains committed to operating “with the least amount of disruption to our mission and workforce.” The watchdog will continue its focus on top Senate and House priorities, including IT and cybersecurity, science and technology, health care, national security, and identifying waste, fraud and abuse across agencies. 

“Our priorities are the Congress’ priorities,” Brown said. Workforce losses “may mean that it takes us longer to start engagements. So it could impact … anything across the Congress. We’ll work with committees to make sure we’re working on their highest priority issues.”

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The bill from Rep. Nikki Budzinski, D-Ill., would place what she called new “guardrails and expectations” on the department’s troubled EHR rollout. If those aren’t met within two years, Congress would restrict the VA from issuing any new work under the contract, which has ballooned to a total estimated cost of $37 billion, up from the initial 2018 price tag of $10 billion.

Speaking during a legislative meeting of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, Budzinski said the “VA has only managed to deploy the system at six hospitals” after experiencing “delays, patient safety concerns and dramatic impacts on veterans’ access to care.” Because of those issues, the VA put further rollout of the program on pause in 2023 and reworked many of the service-level agreements in the contract with Oracle Cerner.

The heart of the new legislation, Budzinski signaled, would be requiring the VA to “create a baseline of clinical and business workflows, as well as technical requirements, to ensure the standardization of VA practices and systems.” On top of that, it would also set new “health care quality metrics” based on the VA’s own Strategic Analytics for Improvement and Learning Value Model, and new reporting and independent verification and validation requirements. 

The VA would also be prevented from launching the EHR system at additional medical facilities unless the department can certify that the system buildout and configuration are accurate and complete, the staff and infrastructure are prepared for rollout, possible “adverse effects” have been mitigated, and the system meets 99.9% uptime before certification.

If the bill is signed into law, the secretary of the VA would have two years to return to Congress a certification that the legislation’s requisite baselines and metrics “show consistent improvement.” During the same period, Budzinski wants to see at least two additional VA medical facilities launch the EHR upon meeting the certification requirements laid out in the bill.

At that point, if the VA can’t get both of those things done, it would be restricted from issuing any new options or extending the contract with Oracle Cerner — though it would be allowed to continue any previous contractual work until it expires.

The legislation comes as the VA has plans to expand the EHR’s rollout to 13 new sites in 2026. Despite continued concern from overseers like Budzinski on Capitol Hill, the VA believes that after the relaunch, this time things will be different. 

“Everyone can be certain this time that our leaders are focused, engaged, and owning it,” VA Deputy Secretary Paul Lawrence wrote in a blog post published Tuesday. Lawrence said he has visited 12 of the 13 facilities next up, and will visit the final one next month. “This time, everyone is dialed in, and it is influencing how we drive our deployments,” referring to the “more than 400 individuals” he engaged with on those trips.

Even the six facilities currently running the modernized Oracle Cerner platform have found their groove, according to Lawrence, pointing to “13,000 users who have provided health care to over 188,000 Veterans” at those sites.

“Oracle Health has improved system performance, reliability and usability, including operating at 100% outage-free for 27 of the last 31 months (June 2023 – December 2025), with 100% attainment of ticket management targets for 30 consecutive months (July 2023 – December 2025), and 100% attainment of Incident-Free Time for nearly two years straight (March 2024 – December 2025),” he wrote.

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According to a Wednesday announcement from GSA, the new partnership with NIST’s Center for AI Standards and Innovation will support its USAi platform, which allows agencies to experiment with various models. The new testing and measurement effort aims to speed up AI adoption while improving security and confidence in those systems.

“By combining GSA’s government-wide reach with NIST’s AI evaluation expertise, we’re strengthening how the federal government deploys AI,” GSA Administrator Edward Forst said in a statement included in the release. 

The announcement comes as agencies are increasingly leaning on the technology to assist workers and automate away administrative toil. But as the technology continues its rapid evolution, so too do concerns about its reliability and security. At the same time, the Trump administration has also sought to tighten its grip on AI outputs that don’t align with its policies and the government’s permissions for use of that technology. 

Per the release, the CAISI — formerly the AI Safety Institute — will provide tools and guidance to help GSA “evaluate advanced AI models, select and interpret benchmarks, and conduct hands-on testing within real federal workflows.” 

The agencies also plan to create “guidelines and checklists” that other agencies can adopt.

Notably, President Donald Trump’s AI Action Plan last year recommended building an “evaluations ecosystem” and establishing resources for agencies to conduct their own testing. 

“We’re at a pivotal time in the AI revolution and this partnership between CAISI and GSA will enable federal agencies to adopt AI in ways that help the American people,” Craig Burkhardt, NIST’s acting director, said in a written statement in the release.

While not mentioned in the release, the GSA is simultaneously floating contract language for the government’s AI deployments via its Multiple Awards Schedule.

The agency recently published a draft clause for AI system contracts that would establish ground rules for things like intellectual property rights, use of government data, security incident reporting, and rights for government evaluations. 

Per the draft, probes would “assess bias, truthfulness, safety, unsolicited ideological content, and other factors determined by the Government in order to facilitate evaluations.”

Notably, the draft guidance would require contractors to agree that their technology could be integrated with government systems for “any lawful Government purpose,” echoing the apparent impetus of a clash between Anthropic and the Pentagon that led to a governmentwide ban on the company. 

It is not clear from the partnership announcement whether the evaluations search for the type of “ideological biases” and “social agendas” targeted in Trump’s executive order aimed at preventing “woke” AI in government. 

A GSA spokesman didn’t respond to FedScoop’s requests for comment on what the current evaluation practices are, what the rubric would look like, and whether there are plans to make the assessments public. 

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“With these investments we seek breakthrough ideas and novel collaborations leveraging the scientific prowess of our National Laboratories, the private sector, universities, and science philanthropies,” Darío Gil, DOE’s under secretary for science and Genesis Mission lead, said in a press release. 

There are two award phases based on team size. Small teams can expect individual awards of $500,000 to $750,000, though the exact number of awards will depend on the availability of appropriated funds and number of meritorious applications, according to the RFA. Large teams will receive three to five times that of the small team awards. 

Small team projects will last nine months, while large team projects will run for three years. 

The Energy Department anticipates chosen teams will begin work by July 1. Applications will be evaluated based on several factors, including technical feasibility, cost-effectiveness and scientific merit. 

The Genesis Mission is the Trump administration’s flagship technology project and framed as a coordinated national effort that aims to double the productivity of the U.S. research and development budget. The 26 challenges announced last month have helped put that goal into perspective, outlining objectives such as using digital twins to derisk the development of biotechnology, building an AI-fusion digital convergence platform and creating energy management strategies to support new data center technologies. 

Since the Genesis Mission kicked off in November, the DOE has worked to quickly lay the foundation to enable execution. 

“We’re going to show quite a lot of results this year,” Gil told FedScoop in an interview last month. The agency and its labs have made progress on AI supercomputer buildouts, as well as an agentic framework and integrated platform. 

While much of the Genesis Mission centers on AI, it’s not about innovating for innovation sake, according to Gil.

“The part that people don’t appreciate is that it’s AI for something — for science, for engineering,” he said. “Sometimes it just gets reduced.”

The Energy Department launched a consortium in February to act as a single access point for members and resources. The consortium is hosting an event Thursday to help organizations identify collaborators for the current RFA and other Genesis Mission opportunities.

Initial Genesis Mission collaborators include Nvidia, Microsoft, AWS and 20 other technology companies. Anthropic was in the first wave of industry collaborators, but the Claude-maker is not listed as such on the Genesis website as of Wednesday. 

The AI startup entered a high-stakes dispute with the Department of Defense in late February that has upended its place in the workflows of federal agencies. While Anthropic has filed a lawsuit against the administration following a governmentwide ban, agencies have been quick to take action. 

“As directed by President Trump, the Department of Energy is reviewing all existing contracts and uses of Anthropic technology,” a spokesperson for DOE said in an email to FedScoop last week. “The Department remains firmly committed to ensuring that the technology we employ serves the public interest, protects America’s energy and national security, and advances our mission.”

The DOE did not respond directly to questions about Anthropic’s changing role in the Genesis Mission. Anthropic also did not respond to a request for comment. 

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The 14-page MOU, which the independent financial regulatory agencies said will “support innovation while upholding market integrity and investor and customer protection,” has dozens of references to data. That includes a section on the proper procedures for the sharing, storing and protecting of data, guided by federal IT standards and best practices from NIST.

David Bottom, the SEC’s former chief information officer, said in an interview with FedScoop that the agreement suggests agency data chiefs will “continue to take a more central role” in defining data taxonomies. That could be a crucial point given the agencies’ move toward a so-called golden record of data.

“I think it accelerates what’s been in practice before,” said Bottom, who left the SEC last November after nearly six years with the agency. “If you read the MOU, it certainly contemplates non-public information being received by either the SEC or the CFTC, and shared between the two.”

Bottom, now the CISO for Consulting Services Group, said he doesn’t think the new agreement will “shake everything up,” especially given previous MOUs reached by the regulators in 2004, 2008 and 2018. For example, there’s “always been overlap” between the agencies on swaps and “a partnership” on examinations. Because of those dynamics, information-sharing has always occurred — a point the MOU acknowledges.

A key difference in this arrangement, Bottom believes, is the emphasis on non-public information. The MOU clearly “recognizes where the SEC and CFTC are in terms of applying their regulatory frameworks and legislative responsibilities to crypto and emerging technologies,” he said.  

JR Drabick, a former SEC enforcement attorney and federal prosecutor, had a similar read on the MOU with regard to data, predicting “more automated, institutional sharing of data as opposed to … one-off access, request-based data-sharing.” On the agreement’s calls for enhanced cooperation on enforcement matters, Drabick believes it’s a natural step from SEC Chair Paul Atkins’ push to “pull back on the enforcement-by-regulation approach.”

“There’s a real opportunity there for collaboration, harmonization that could have a big difference in terms of how crypto is actually on-the-ground regulated, and [how] fraud in the crypto markets is enforced,” said Drabick, now a partner in Ropes & Gray’s litigation & enforcement practice.

The Trump administration’s attitudes toward crypto regulation have differed greatly from those of the Biden administration. Drabick said a note in the MOU on its intent to provide “regulatory clarity and certainty built on technology-neutral regulations” may be a “subtle rebuke” to former Chair Gary Gensler’s tenure leading the SEC — a term derided by digital asset leaders as decidedly anti-crypto.

“If you look at the current commissioners’ public comments,” Drabick said, they’re saying that their job “isn’t to pick the winners and losers. ‘Our job isn’t to pick the technologies. It’s to provide an appropriate playing field,’ and I think that’s what [the technology-neutral comment is] getting at.”

Overall, the MOU has an “aspirational … let’s not step on each other’s toes” feel to it, Drabick said. John Hunt, a partner at Sullivan & Worcester who represents asset managers and has dealt with the CFTC and SEC on legal matters for decades, echoed those sentiments, noting that the MOU “hardly says anything.”

The agreement, he continued, may reflect the Trump administration’s “general impatience” with Congress on crypto regulation; though the GENIUS Act was signed into law last summer, the CLARITY Act is still in flux. Hunt believes the MOU also serves as a “shot across the bow to Gary Gensler” — who also chaired the CFTC during the Obama administration — “and his whole approach to regulation.” 

The “technology-neutral” mention, meanwhile, may be a move to ensure “shares on blockchain are not treated differently from shares as they’re currently trading,” noting that Europe’s Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation “faces the same issue.”

“They don’t want to favor one type of technology over another,” Hunt said, “rather than focusing on, ‘well, we want to move everybody to blockchain.’ … I think the idea is to be more agnostic.”

The SEC and CFTC will work in the months ahead to implement pieces of the MOU, including “a fit-for-purpose regulatory framework for crypto assets and other emerging technologies.” Much of that work should be basic; Bottom said that in terms of data interoperability, the agencies are already using “the same playbook” for things like swaps.

On the IT and security side, Bottom said it’ll be important for agency staffers to “take into account the cyber risks” as the SEC and CFTC adopt emerging technologies. And when it comes to implementing joint regulations from the Financial Data Transparency Act, the CDO offices will need to have discussions around taxonomies and labels — particularly labels for non-public information. 

“This is just more of an incentive to implement the same taxonomies and rules of the road as we go forward,” Bottom said. “It’s really going to be the rule-makings that drive the technology investments at … both agencies.”

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In a memo to federal agency leaders, OPM Director Scott Kupor said the HR Shared Service Center aims to “reduce fragmentation” within the government and allow agency staff to focus on their mission rather than administrative work. 

Per the memo, that new center provides a “comprehensive” suite of functions, such as benefits management, payroll administration, performance management, recruitment, training, and workforce planning. Using those services is voluntary for agencies and is a fee-for-service model. 

At least eight federal entities have already indicated they will make the transition, per the memo. Those include the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Office of Government Ethics, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. 

The announcement is the latest development in the Trump administration’s broader push to consolidate HR services across the government. That plan, called “Federal HR 2.0,” aims to create a single personnel management platform for the federal government as a way to save money and reduce duplicative systems. 

The new center builds on the “vision” of Federal HR 2.0, Kupor’s Tuesday memo said. 

“This Shared Service Center is a milestone in our effort to streamline operations, reduce duplication, and deliver high quality service across government,” Kupor said in a statement included in an emailed release. “With the expertise and modern HR technology we have at OPM, we are well positioned to make that vision a reality.” 

According to the memo, the nearly 42,000 HR employees across the government at the beginning of the Trump administration were “often performing duplicative and overlapping functions.” 

The HR workforce, like other occupations, has decreased under President Donald Trump as part of the administration’s efforts to reduce the size of the federal government. Roughly 8,500 workers in human resources-related jobs have left government since Jan. 20, 2025, per OPM data as of January of this year. 

OPM didn’t respond to FedScoop’s request for comment on whether the shared services center would impact the HR workforce across government and expectations for how many agencies would be transitioning to the service, among other things.

As for next steps, interested agencies were instructed to contact the new center. The estimated timeline to migrate services to the center is six months.

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The cybersecurity-focused market survey and quantum-related request for information are targeting the systems at the core of the Department of Transportation component’s multiyear, multibillion dollar modernization initiative: the National Airspace System and Air Traffic Control.

The FAA is looking for vendors that could improve its information security and operations, such as penetration testing, vulnerability evaluations and incident response coordination among other tasks. The scope of the project also includes assessing the current NAS cybersecurity posture to identify capability gaps, test emerging tech tools and recommend improvements. 

The DOT component is also planning to move its NAS, ATC and IT systems infrastructure to post-quantum cryptography, a concept centered around mitigating attacks from future quantum computers by adopting new encryption methods.  

“Without quantum‑resistant, crypto‑agile security, the NAS cannot achieve the reliability, performance, or international leadership required in the decades ahead,” the FAA said in its RFI published last week. “FAA therefore views PQC not as a compliance exercise, but as a foundational enabler of modernization — one that must be embedded into every vendor solution, every system upgrade, and every step of the Brand New Air Traffic Control System.”

PQC is a nascent field but has captured attention across federal agencies. The FAA is looking for vendors that can shed some light on the process of transitioning to PQC, costs associated and operational impacts along the way. 

Interested applicants can respond to the RFI up until April 10. The cybersecurity market survey closes March 18. 

The fact-finding expedition comes approximately two years before the FAA’s self-imposed deadline of implementing a new ATC system by the end of 2028. 

FAA Administrator Bryan Bedford detailed some of the inroads made thus far during a pair of hearings in December. At the time, the FAA was beginning to convert copper lines to fiber and deploying new digital radio and voice switches. The official also touted contracts with initial partners, such as Peraton, and teased upcoming radar partners that were later announced in January. 

In an attempt to remove silos and support modernization goals, the Transportation Department initiated an overhaul of the FAA’s organizational structure in January. As part of the plans, the FAA is consolidating management of IT and other divisions under the administrator and launching two new offices. 

The stakes for acing the modernization effort were reaffirmed in February as the National Transportation Safety Board placed the blame for last year’s fatal DCA crash, in part, on the FAA’s technology-related failures. 

In testimony before lawmakers earlier this month, the agency’s deputy inspector general highlighted potential roadblocks. 

“FAA has not released a new comprehensive plan that anticipates and addresses risks,” DOT Deputy IG Mitch Behm said, referring to the modernization initiative. 

“DOT must protect the IT systems that are critical to transportation safety and reliability,” he added. “However, our reports show that the department continues to face significant exploitable vulnerabilities and has yet to address a substantial backlog of security weaknesses.”

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The House on Tuesday passed a bill to reauthorize the SBIR and STTR programs for five years, following the Senate’s passage of the legislation two weeks ago and months of bipartisan, bicameral negotiations. The Small Business Innovation and Economic Security Act (S.3971), led by Sens. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, and Ed Markey, D-Mass., cleared the lower chamber in a 345-41 vote. 

In remarks on the House floor Monday, Rep. Nydia Velázquez, D-N.Y., ranking member of the lower chamber’s Small Business Committee, said that nearly $6 billion in funding for “small, innovative companies” has been frozen since the end of September, when authorization for SBIR and STTR lapsed after the Senate failed to pass a short-term bill amid broader negotiations. 

“These programs are overwhelmingly successful, boasting a demonstrated return across over 40 years of operation, resulting in groundbreaking technologies that have revolutionized medicine, telecommunications and military capabilities,” said Velázquez, who was one of four House lawmakers who tried to head off the funding cliff last September with a one-year stopgap bill.

“Unfortunately,” she continued, “negotiations started too late, and these agreements were too great to reach a deal before the deadline. I am proud to say that after months of uncertainty, we are finally turning the lights back on.”

The SBIR program, established in 1982 during the Reagan administration, was launched to spur small business innovation while strengthening federal R&D funding for tech-focused enterprises. Ten years later, STTR was created to fuel work between small businesses and nonprofit research orgs, with an eye on expedited lab-to-market innovations.

Per SBA data, the programs support 4,000 companies annually at roughly $4 billion per year. The federal government does not take equity or IP ownership in companies funded through SBIR or STTR.

The agreement reached by Ernst and Markey, the chair and ranking member of the Senate Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee, respectively, includes callouts for bolstering research security, offering “strategic breakthrough funding,” boosting a commercialization readiness program and much more. The bill also aims to reduce administrative burden, make improvements to technical and business assistance elements of SBIR and STTR, and upgrade data collection processes.

Velázquez touted a provision she and Markey led to invest in contract officer training. The strategic breakthrough funding, she said, would “help attract both private capital and government buy-in to rapidly scale promising technologies.” And lawmakers from the House Science, Space, and Technology made “real improvements” to the foreign due diligence program, according to the New York Democrat.

“After a period of tremendous uncertainty, a reauthorization period of longer than five years will give small businesses and agencies the certainty they need for long-term planning,” Velázquez said. “The lapse in authorization over the past five months has been excruciating and unprecedented for small firms and labs who are at the cutting edge of technology. … This lapse was avoidable and the costs were real. We must be active in efforts to ensure it never happens again.”

Rep. Beth Van Duyne, R-Texas, credited Ernst, Markey, Velázquez, House Small Business Committee Chair Roger Williams, R-Texas, and House Science, Space, and Technology leaders Brian Babin of Texas and Zoe Lofgren of California for their work “to get these programs reauthorized.” The bill will “bridge the Valley of Death between research and commercialization” through better data practices across agencies, modernized resources and additional training for acquisition officials, she said.

“The SBIR and the STTR programs empower Main Street to deliver real solutions for both the government and the private sector,” Van Duyne said. “I thank my colleagues on both sides of the aisle and their staff for working to find a bipartisan path forward to reauthorize these critical programs.”

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In an audit that examined the 2025 filing season in the wake of those drastic workforce cuts, the Government Accountability Office found that the IRS doesn’t have an updated strategic workforce plan that addresses various staff-related challenges. 

While last year’s filing season “was mostly insulated from these changes,” the watchdog sounded the alarm on the effect the cuts will have on “workforce planning and modernization efforts for future filing season operations.” 

The Biden White House’s Inflation Reduction Act provided billions of dollars for modernization projects aimed at improving filing season operations, but according to the GAO, those projects “have also been in flux with the ongoing organizational changes.” 

In March of last year, IRS leaders dismantled the Transformation and Strategy Office that managed many of those efforts. Since then, agency officials have continued with some IRA-funded IT priorities, while others have been altered to “align with the new administration’s goals,” the report stated.

The tax agency has continued to work on the document upload tool it launched in 2021, and has also moved forward on the redesign and digitization of simple notices, per the watchdog. Other online service enhancements “have been deprioritized as focus has shifted to other initiatives,” according to the report. 

Some technology initiatives were paused following the change in administrations but have since resumed, per the GAO, specifically the modernization of call centers that included a pilot program allowing customer service representatives “to access the right information about the taxpayer at the right time and launching a new electronic workforce management system for scheduling Accounts Management staff.”

The IRS’s paperless push may be the IT project most clearly vulnerable following the agency’s workforce reductions. The GAO noted that Trump administration officials determined that the Biden administration’s Zero Paper Initiative “was in line” with current priorities, but “were unsure about the status of some related activities.”

“For example, IRS officials told us that the contract for its scanning and storage efforts ended in May 2025 and IRS signed a 1-year bridge contract with an option to renew each month,” the report stated. “Given the lack of a long-term contract and the fact that increased scanning could affect staffing needs, officials were unsure how much return processing staff there should be for the 2026 filing season. In January 2026, IRS officials told us that they still could not determine staff targets after they had awarded a longer-term contract and ended the bridge contract in September.”

The GAO delivered three recommendations to the IRS as part of its audit, pushing the tax agency to establish an implementation team to manage reform efforts, make sure that a newly developed strategic workforce plan builds off previous plans, and create a blueprint for addressing a correspondence inventory backlog.

The IRS neither agreed nor disagreed with the watchdog’s findings, saying that it would share additional details in a written response detailing its follow-up actions.

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