Challenge winners mock up IRS websites of the future

A Sandia National Labs contractor and a San Francisco-based web designer are among the winners of a challenge to improve the IRS’s website.

Over $20,000 was awarded as part of the agency’s Tax Design Challenge, which invited applicants to develop a user-friendly way of making sense of the 200 data fields the IRS collects of taxpayers’ personal finances.

Andrew Miller, a user interface designer and front-end web developer for Sandia, won $10,000 for his “IRS MyService” design. The IRS also awarded Andrea Angquist, a user experience designer for agile software development consulting firm Pivotal Labs, $5,000 for her “IRS 365” design.

Miller designed a web-based dashboard that would allow users to search through their yearly tax history. Angquist built a mobile-based service that would allow people to siphon through their tax data, set reminders for filing and permit third-party access to monitor for identity theft.

In addition to the overall prize, Miller was awarded $2,000 and Angquist $1,000 for being judged as the designs with the “best taxpayer usefulness.” Monetary prizes for “best financial capability” were also awarded to submissions from Washington, D.C. and Minnesota.

The grand prize was underwritten by the Mortgage Bankers Association, who also sponsored the challenge.

“The winning designs represent critical first steps towards the worthy goal of making taxpayer information easier to safely and swiftly obtain, for instance, when one is applying for a mortgage,” said David H. Stevens, CMB, President and CEO of the Mortgage Bankers Association.

“This was a first-time endeavor for the IRS and one that reflects our strong commitment to engaging the public in efforts to build for the future state of tax administration,” said IRS Commissioner John Koskinen. “We saw a strong response from the participants, and the winning designs are creative displays of what a future online taxpayer account could look like.”

You can see the full list of winners and their design’s on IRS’s website.

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