The federal government has a troubled track record of delivering high quality, secure, customer-facing technology solutions. In light of congressional interest in a free IRS-run electronic tax filing solution, Govini evaluated the spending and performance associated with several comparable government technology solutions. Due to its recency, comparable scale, and complexity, the 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) federal health insurance exchange provides a useful benchmark to estimate the costs associated with federal deployment of a customer-facing technology solution.
The ACA IT system executes sensitive, complex transactions for 5-10 million Americans each year. This requires integration of data systems and transmission of sensitive personal data across state-run healthcare systems, federal agencies and external, for-profit healthcare providers. With over 150M tax returns filed in 2020, a proposed government-run free tax filing system would magnify the number of transactions—and their associated requirements—exponentially.