Federal employees back at work Monday, facing backlogs and IT issues

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/federal-employees-back-work-monday-facing-backlogs-issues/story?id=60676436

By Stephanie Ebbs
Jan 28, 2019

congressional sources estimate it will take at least a year for IRS to recover from unanswered taxpayer questions and other work that piled up during the shutdown.

The backlog of unanswered letters to IRS increased to 5 million pieces of mail during the shutdown and IRS is still receiving more than 700,000 pieces of a mail a day. The IRS told members of Congress last week that more than half of employees called back to work to start processing tax refunds those employees couldn't go back to work due to financial difficulties or were unreachable.

The IRS also told members of Congress 25 information technology staff left to look for other jobs every week during the shutdown.

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Federal workers will also have some logistical hurdles on their first day back at work. Some agency heads tweeted that extra resources and IT support would be available to help employees who couldn't access their computer or email during the shutdown and may now be locked out due to expired passwords.