Annual report - 2004 - Part 4
Strengthening our technology base from the 2004 Annual Report
In October 2002, Inland Revenue delivered a Technology Strategy which described the technology roadmap for the next five years. This strategy describes a major change to the way in which technology will support the organisation and ultimately the way in which our people will work. Of the 32 initiatives recommended in this document, six have been completed and seven have been initiated.
The Information Systems Strategic Plan (ISSP), a product of the Technology Strategy roadmap, ensures that our technology direction links with the business plan. The vision for the ISSP is to "have a robust and flexible technology platform to enable us to deliver quality tax and social policy services to our customers, government and other key stakeholders." The ISSP documents the actual projects, costs and milestones that we will embark upon over the next three years (2003-06), to deliver our strategic goals. It also captures all other technology projects that have been planned or initiated, to provide a single point of visibility for projects that will impact our future operation.
These technology projects include imaging, electronic document storage and retrieval and case management. These projects are all key parts of improving customer service levels. They provide access to customer information such as statements and letters at the time a customer makes an enquiry. By having this information available online, our goal is to resolve many of our customer questions and issues at the time they are raised, rather than having to wait for their data to be retrieved from a manual archive, analysed and the customer called back.
We are also looking to enhance customer service by providing taxpayers with immediate access to their own information, by providing the facility for taxpayers to view copies of the documents we have sent them through our online services.
In 2003 we began an assessment of our mainframe services and concluded that greater capacity was required to meet our increasing workload. As a result of the review, a new agreement was made with EDS New Zealand to purchase two mainframes with supporting software, tapes and disks. EDS will continue to support the mainframe by providing facilities management services.
A review is also under way on our future telecommunications requirements to enhance call answering services. We expect the results of this review to be implemented in 2005.
Benchmarking
During 2003-04, we conducted our second international study to benchmark the use of technology and its impacts on Inland Revenue. Twenty-one international and ten US state tax authorities were involved and the study focused on six areas - organisational profile, tax audit, call centres, transaction volumes, payment processing and information technology. The study provides useful comparisons between tax administrations and significantly assists our business decision making.
Through this benchmarking we know that by international standards we operate a highly efficient tax administration.
In New Zealand, it costs $73 per taxpayer to operate the tax administration against an international (excludes US states) average of $128 per taxpayer. New Zealand spends an average of $0.87 for every $100 of tax collected, compared to the international (again excluding the US States) average of $1.22. New Zealand's costs include social support programme activities, unlike most other tax administrations.
The benchmarking also shows we have a highly educated, stable technology workforce and that we service our customers well, with efficient use of hardware processing power and storage. Our technology inventory and technological performance also compares well with other international tax agencies.
Internationally, e-business is starting to play a key role. On average, 24% of international tax agency taxpayers use an e-business channel compared to 23% 24 of our taxpayers.
We expect New Zealand's result to increase during the year with more e-services becoming available.
24 At the time of the study.
Date published: 16 Nov 2004
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