IRS Selects Maya A. Bernstein as
Privacy Advocate

WASHINGTON - The Internal Revenue Service announced today the appointment of Maya A. Bernstein as the agency´s Privacy Advocate. The Privacy Advocate develops policies to protect taxpayer and IRS employee privacy and ensures that they are integrated into all IRS practices and modernization efforts. The Privacy Advocate also ensures that taxpayers and employees are aware of their privacy rights.

“We are fortunate indeed to have someone with Maya´s level of expertise directing the IRS´s privacy office,” said David R. Williams, Chief of the Communications and Liaison division, of which the Office of the Privacy Advocate is part. “As technology enables the IRS to modernize, privacy becomes an ever more important issue.”

Bernstein, an attorney, has special expertise in information policy and electronic commerce, including data protection, privacy compliance and electronic signature law. She comes to the IRS from the private sector, where most recently she was a consultant in information policy and administrative law. Before that, she was an associate at a law firm.

Previously, she was a Senior Policy Analyst at the Office of Management and Budget. During her nine-year tenure, Bernstein was responsible for reviewing a wide variety of agency regulations, ensuring compliance by federal agencies with the Administrative Procedure Act, Regulatory Flexibility Act, Paperwork Reduction Act and the policy of the President. She was also OMB´s lead analyst on privacy policy and, in that capacity, routinely advised attorneys throughout the government on implementation of the Privacy Act of 1974.

She has taught courses and lectured on privacy.

Bernstein earned a Juris Doctor, cum laude, from the Washington College of Law, American University, pursued graduate study in the program on Science, Technology and Society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and earned a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Michigan with honors. She is admitted to the bars of California and the District of Columbia.

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