
IRS Emerging Technology Day Virtual Event
October 13, 2020 9:00 AM-12:30 PM EST RegistrationIndustry ParticipationOctober 13, 2020
9:00-9:05 AM EST
Opening Remarks

Tom Suder
President, CEO, ATARC
9:05-9:15 AM EST
Commissioner’s Welcome

Chuck Rettig
Commissioner, Internal Revenue Service
9:15-9:25 AM EST
A Focus on Industry Partnership, Case Management and Digitalization

Harrison Smith
Digitalization Office Director, Internal Revenue Service

Shanna Webbers
Chief Procurement Officer, Internal Revenue Service
9:25-9:30 AM EST
Program Overview

Caiyi Lang
IT Program Leader, Internal Revenue Service
9:30-10:25 AM EST
Panel Discussion: Digitalization in Tax Administration
The IRS has achieved significant operational efficiencies by digitizing some paper, thereby increasing operational efficiency (e.g. Records Management, eDiscovery, FOIA). Over the course of the next years all agencies, including IRS, must become fully digital. To get there the IRS seeks a coordinated approach to scan paper, convert it to OCR content, apply standardized metadata, and integrate the
digital result with records and content management systems, so content is systematically maintained and easily retrieved.
Since digitization is transitional, IRS sees no need to acquire in-house digitization technology. Rather, the agency seeks a vendor digitization solution that allows integration with and simple retrieval from existing content and records management systems. What emerging technology could assist in the effort to digitize information and integrate with IRS systems to search, retrieve, and store?

Melissa Kaminin
Enterprise Architecture Director, Internal Revenue Service

Tracy Keeter
Deputy Associate CIO,Enterprise Operations, Internal Revenue Service

Brad Bouton
IRS Enterprise Case Management Office Director, Internal Revenue Service

Gbemi Acholonu
Digitalization Strategy Executive Project Director, Internal Revenue Service

Moderator: Celia Doggette
Identity and Records Protection Director, Internal Revenue Service
10:25-10:30 AM EST
Industry Perspective

Chris Kelly
Account Director, Federal Secure, DOD and Intel, MFGS, Inc.
10:30-10:45 AM EST
Emerging Technology Talks
IT Modernization through Softw are Delivery Automation (SDA)
It takes core SDA capabilities in order to connect, automate and orchestrate tools across development, operations and shared service teams to optimize software delivery. In this TechTalk, CloudBees will talk about the core SDA capabilities that Federal Agencies should be considering as part of their IT Modernization efforts to better manage and monitor your path to production and meet the evolving needs of Government.

Tyler Johnson
Senior Solutions Architect, Cloudbees

Considerations for Technology Integration Risk Management
The potential of new and emerging technologies to change the way we do business – and better serve the taxpayer – is tremendous. Yet the implications of implementing innovative technologies in large and complex environments must be considered, from both the standpoint of the resource demands on the IT and Operations units, the impacts on Business Operations Divisions, and the effects on the ultimate end-user – the taxpayer. Potentially cost-effective COTS solutions aren’t built with these factors in mind – therefore their implementation requires a deep analysis of risk, costs, and projected results. In this TechTalk, Elizabeth McCarthy will provide insights and lessons learned into how Maximus has supported the IRS to define and manage new technology implementation, as well as offering key takeaways for successful integrations.

Elizabeth McCarthy
Program Manager, Maximus

10:45-10:50 AM EST
Doing Business with the IRS

Ali Pourghassemi
Industry Liaison, Internal Revenue Service
10:50-11:00 AM EST
Emerging Technology Talks
A Unified Approach to Automation in Tax Administration
When automating tax administration, it is easy to take a siloed approach for each individual process. However, it is important to think holistically when considering digitization across agency operations and constituent-facing processes. This session will show you how to think about end-to-end optimization — from the creation, versioning, and acceptance, through to management and analysis of critical records. We’ll discuss how agencies can accelerate and automate workflows across multiple stakeholders and how a unified approach brings greater insights and lower risk.

Greg Buchholz
Senior Vice President, CLM at DocuSign
11:00AM- 11:55 AM EST
Panel Discussion: Modernizing Information Return Systems
In a continual effort to provide the secure and seamless tax filing experience the public expects, IRS is assessing and identifying opportunities to modernize tax administration, including its information returns systems,. As part of the second phase of the IRS Modernization Plan, the IRS seeks to address information returns processing systems, which are built on legacy technologies, to more efficiently and effectively respond to changing legislative and business requirements.
What emerging technology could assist in modernizing the information returns
pipeline, which involves creating modern and flexible solutions for the ingestion,
validation, perfection, management, and use of information returns data?

Jim Keith
Assistant Director, Submission Processing, Applications Development, Internal Revenue Service

Sri Rao
Solution Engineering Director, Internal Revenue Service

Courtney Williams
Senior Technical Advisor, Internal Revenue Service

Michael Harper
Senior Advisor, Internal Revenue Service

Moderator: Kaschit Pandya
Deputy Chief Information Officer for Operations, Internal Revenue Service
11:55 AM- 12:00 PM EST
Industry Perspective

Brandon O'Leary
Senior Developer Evangelist, Gitlab
12:00-12:15 PM EST
Emerging Technology Talks
Infrastructure Innovation
IRS, like many agencies, is looking for solutions that will infuse innovation into their environment and increase their operational efficiency. During this session, hear how Hitachi Vantara Federal’s products and services can inject Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning into the IRS’ environment.

Gary Hix
CTO, Hitachi Vantara Federal

Automating Critical Processes for Government
There is a new category of analytics called Analytic Process Automation (APA) which is available to support critical missions. APA is a platform software capability that is swiftly differentiating itself by accelerating the rate at which organizations can make critical, data-driven decisions. Through these platforms, methods that have historically required a high level of skill can now be executed by any level of data worker regardless of technical acumen thanks to code-free and assisted building blocks that can construct models with transparency and make data science learning and up-skilling easier.
Alteryx is the market leader in APA and uniquely provides unified analytics, data science, and process automation all in one platform. APA solves the challenges of automating data inputs from any data source (everything from traditional data sources, local files and applications to more modern and diverse sources such as process automation bots, data in the cloud and external business processing logic) and aggregates the analytic steps by providing users with over 260 automation building blocks, covering the full spectrum of the analytics lifecycle including higher level analytic capabilities such as predictive, geo spatial and Machine Learning all in a code free or code friendly environment.

Gerald Mann
Sales Engineering Manager, Public Sector, Alteryx

12:15-12:20 PM EST
Looking Ahead with ATARC

Tom Suder
President, CEO, ATARC
12:20-12:30 PM EST
Closing Remarks

Tommy Smith
Deputy Chief Information Officer for Strategy & Modernization, Internal Revenue Service