reSee.it Podcast Summary
Sam Corcos describes a leap from private-sector tech to government service, joining Treasury to fix the IRS’s sprawling, famously troubled modernization program. He was brought in under a Doge-adjacent arrangement to help land the plane on a multibillion-dollar IT effort that had run years past its original five-year target. He explains that, in government, the chief information officer is not simply a CTO but a leadership role often filled by nontechnical career staff, because there were no rigorous standards for the job. Believing in structural change, the administration authorized sweeping action: around 50 people from IRS IT were placed on administrative leave and replaced by technically capable engineers. Corcos emphasizes that this shift was intended to inject real technical authority into decisions about contracts, vendors, and architecture.
Within weeks the dialogue turns to the realities of government procurement, where incentives and process can block meaningful reform. Corcos describes a world where a single vendor drama—where prices can surge from pilot pricing to multi-year renewals—exposes how the system can price gouge while pretending to be fixed. He cites examples such as do not pay lists for fraud prevention and the repetition of 20x price hikes after contract renegotiations, revealing a misalignment between decision-makers who rarely pay the money and engineers who understand the systems. The procurement process itself is described as a labyrinth: competitive bidding, value-added resellers, and a heavy reliance on contractors who often commute billions of dollars of spending without commensurate returns. The result, he says, is mounting complexity, 108 sources of truth across IT, and chronic delays.
Corcos also highlights broader cultural and leadership issues. He contrasts the bureaucratic inertia with Doge’s high-agency ethos, yet notes the fragility of reforms when leadership changes or when salaries and hiring lanes discourage talent from staying. He cites the mainframe-heavy reality of IRS systems, the need for data integrity, and the push to stop shadow IT by aligning engineering talent with mission-critical work. He stresses that progress depends on leadership that values technical competence, reallocation of resources, and cross-agency collaboration—an area where the Treasury, IRS, and other agencies are beginning to work together to fix procurement, hiring, and technology lifecycles.