In an announcement last week, the IRS said it "remains committed to the original goal of the project -- improving performance -- but is changing its approach to reduce risk and obtain business results more quickly."

John Lipold, a spokesman for the agency, said a seat management study committee has been looking at project requirements and industry best practices for the past several years but had not yet formalized a proposal or begun to seek bids for the work.

"The reason the IRS has pulled back concerning the whole seat management function is that it's a huge requirement," with thousands of desktop machines, help desk functions and IRS facilities in multiple locations throughout all the states in the nation, Lipold said. "The decision was not to go that route and to go forward in smaller, more manageable [projects] rather than a one-size-fits-all approach."

Seat management consists of service and support for desktop and laptop computers and peripherals, the agency's IT help desk, hardware and software procurement, network services, asset security and other functions. The study group is now looking at how to do that on a more localized basis and hopes to issue recommendations by the end of December, Lipold said.

The idea behind the seat management program is to make the agency more efficient in getting its work done, Lipold said. The initiative could affect some 2,000 IRS IT employees, he said.