For almost two decades, the American taxpayer has been forced to use private services for their yearly filing. This is due to a lack of accessible, public tax services to rival the industry standard of TurboTax, H&R Block, and others. Until 2022, when the IRS was funded to build a free filing service through the Inflation Reduction Act. My department, Information Returns Modernization, focused on the 1099 series in support of this effort for internal and customer-facing technological advancement. As a User Experience Design Intern, I redesigned, tested, and delivered the department's intranet: an internal IRS website utilized by 200+ stakeholders everyday.

Modernizing the end-to-end pipeline for small businesses' digital tax submissions.

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Delivered my department's new internal website with improved policies for all aspects of information sharing. This includes, but is not limited to, file management, oversight documentation, and automated systems for change request managements. While creating the most frequently trafficked website of my career, I built skills in automation tools, usability testing, and collaboration with contractors.

Throughout my internship under the umbrellas of Information Technology, Applications Development, Submissions Processing, and my department of Information Returns Modernization, I learned how enterprise data processing operates between IT systems, data sources, and business directives. From, Agile methodology to procurement, I vastly improved my understanding about the scale of work required to modernize digital infrastructure used by over 300 million people every year.

Outside of my main project, I supported project management activities for all IR Mod projects across internal and contractor workflows. I utilized my qualitative user research skills to realign departmental functions based on employee's expertise, interest, and aspirations. I provided on-call graphic design assistance for internal communication. I volunteered my services in a complimentary capacity to other IRS departments such as the Taxpayer Experience Office and the Office of Online Services. Through the Taxpayer Experience Office, I assisted with foundational research on the project of digitizing the (currently) analog overseas TIN acquisition process.

In under 2 months since my internship ended I have seen my former program gutted by the Trump Administration and their fictional government agency, DOGE.