The latest government agency to draw ire from Congress for its conference spending is the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), which apologized this week for spending $60,000 to produce a training video that parodied “Star Trek.”
Produced at the IRS’s own television production studio in New Carrollton, Md., the six-minute video features IRS employees dressed in Star Trek costumes aboard an elaborate replica of the Starship Enterprise, vowing to “boldly go where no government employee has gone before.” Although the video was shown during the opening session of a 2010 training and leadership conference, critics have questioned its training value.
“Given the IRS’s requests for additional resources, it is important to determine whether and to what extent taxpayer resources were devoted to activities unrelated to your agency’s core functions,” Rep. Charles Boustany (R-La.) — chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee’s subcommittee on Oversight — said in a March 20 letter to IRS Acting Commissioner Steven Miller.
Miller initially told Boustany that videos made in the agency’s production studio allow the IRS to “provide education and training to large audiences, both within the IRS and to the public, often while reducing travel and other costs associated with such programs.” In a statement released this week, however, the agency acknowledged that the Star Trek parody lacked educational merit.
“The IRS recognizes and takes seriously our obligation to be good stewards of government resources and taxpayer dollars,” reads the statement. “There is no mistaking that this video did not reflect the best stewardship of resources.”
The agency went on to say that it already has taken measures to ensure that future videos produced are “handled in a judicious manner that makes wise use of taxpayer funds while ensuring a tone and theme appropriate for the nation’s tax system.”
A second, unreleased training video — a spoof of “Gilligan’s Island” — also was called into question by Congress, although it has since been determined to be a legitimate training video.
“The video series with an island theme provided filing season training for 1,900 employees in our Taxpayer Assistance Centers in 400 locations,” the IRS explained. “This example of video training alone saved the IRS about $1.5 million each year compared to the costs of training the employees in person.”
For a recap of last week's top stories, check out MeetingNews Minute:
> Watch More Videos