The Internal Revenue Service: Counting on Learning

Dealing directly with so many taxpayers and handling the frequent changes in the tax code requires an educated workforce, and the IRS considers investments in employee training and development a key priority. According to Dr. Linda M. McCullar, director of leadership and education for the IRS, the organization delivers around 8 million hours of documented training a year. She said that the IRS’ training mission is fourfold. “First is to reshape the workforce to efficiently accomplish the Service’s mission. Second is to reduce managerial and employee frontline burden of operation. Third is to increase the efficiency of human capital operations. And last is to leverage technology to gain efficiency,” she said. “And while all of those are equally important, my focus over the last year and also in the near future is going to be this notion of leveraging technology.”

In fact, the IRS uses technology to help it deliver blended learning solutions, offering instructor-led courses, as well as e-learning and self-paced training. The IRS recently began a phased implementation of the Plateau 4 Learning Management System to manage and deliver its new e-learning initiative, which aims to transfer as much as 50 percent of its learning material online in the next couple of years. “We do a blended approach,” said McCullar. “We have some classes that are just instructor-led, and some courses will always be like that, but we are moving more toward some classes being e-learning, some self-paced and then the blended approach. And what we’re seeing is that the blended approach is becoming the answer to our needs in different parts of the organization.”

Because the tax code is in a near-constant state of flux, training the IRS workforce presents some unique challenges. But with the LMS, the IRS will be able to alert agents automatically when the tax code is revised and retaining is necessary. “Besides changing every year when Congress implements the legislation, there are changes that occur over the course of every year that either clarify or amend as the year goes on,” said McCullar. “Keeping that current for our tax examiners, our revenue agents and all of our mission-critical employees who deal with the taxpayer to be able to provide the most accurate information to their questions is a huge challenge. That’s one of the reasons that we are really pushing hard to get technology as an integral part of the learning experience.”