The Revenue On-Line Service (ROS) is the Irish Government flagship eGovernment Service. Launched originally in 2000 for business customers ROS now caters for over 20 different online business taxes and duties. Over 2 million returns and €16 billion in payments were filed on ROS in 2006. As a result of the success of ROS for business customers ROS was the overall winner in the Impact Category at the eEurope awards in November 2005. Building on the success of ROS for business customers the Irish Revenue Commissioners decided to provide a range of services, including online facilities, for our major customer base, over 2 million citizens employed under Pay As You Earn (PAYE). In June 2006 Irish Revenue introduced a suite of on-line self-service facilities for PAYE taxpayers (employees). These are based around ROS and are a major investment in improving customer service and reducing costs to Revenue. Citizens can now carry out their tax business at a time and place that suits them.
Policy Context
Like most Government agencies in the 90’s Revenue had information stored in multiple locations and systems, everything was paper based, we had a large number of officers providing what can now only be described as ‘slow customer service’. We commenced a programme of consolidation and integration of the many computer systems and we took that opportunity to clean up and improve the quality of the information stored. The Integrated Tax Services (ITS) System provided the foundation on which ROS is built and is the sources of all the information available online for customers. In addition most online transactions are interfaced to ITS for processing. The Irish Revenue Commissioners 2005 – 2007 Statement of Strategy states that ‘Our approach to service delivery… will be primarily electronic ….aimed at improving service to our customers and at the reassignment of valuable resources to focus on our core business of compliance’
Description of target users and groups
The population of Ireland is over 4 million people. Of these there are approximately 2.2 million citizens employed under the Pay As You Earn (PAYE) System. It is not necessary for these employees to file a return or to contact the tax office each year, unless their circumtances have changed. However, the Irish Revenue Commissioners dealt with 2.75 million contacts from employees in 2006. The new service is designed to speed up processing through self-service and automation by eliminating the need for customer service staff to deal with these contacts.
Description of the way to implement the initiative
The Irish Revenue’s approach to the launch of PAYE self-service has been strategic and focused on the increasing demand for eGovernment services in Ireland. The initial proposal to develop online service for PAYE customers was originally signed off by the Management Advisory Committee made up of the Board of the Revenue Commissioners, the Deputy Secretary and all senior managers at Assistant Secretary level. A full time Project Manager was appointed to the project reporting regularly to a Project Board and Steering Committee. A steering committee was also set up to check on progress with the Reachservices registration process development. The PAYE online service enables Revenue to provide an additional and significant quality service for compliant taxpayers furthering the success of ROS as a fully functional service. The PAYE electronic facilities were designed to improve customer service and create further efficiencies in the management of PAYE tax for Revenue. One of Revenue’s strategic goals is to achieve a 30% increase in the number of staff engaged on compliance work by end of 2007.
Main results, benefits and impacts
This new service is a fully automated system which enables customers to engage with Revenue in a secure, fast and efficient way. Employees have access to their Revenue account to check and where necessary update personal details. They can also view and claim tax credits, check progress of written correspondence with Revenue and receive tax repayments. They can select to receive correspondence electronically and arrange to have refunds issued directly to their bank accounts. The customer now has a range of excellent self-service options resulting in a high level of customer satisfaction and confidence in the system. Customers who previously would have been reluctant to make contact with Revenue offices, in relation to their tax affairs, can now access this information privately at their convenience. Since the launch of the new PAYE service in June 2006 there have been 260,000 transactions across all self-service channels. The main resource intensive element in these overall statistics is a taxpayer’s request for an annual review. The total number of reviews requested to date is over 20,000. We conservatively estimate a saving of over 15 man-years on these transactions alone. With reference to the cost figure at 2.3 these savings represent a significant return on our investment at this early stage. However the real benefit to the organisation is the reassignment of valuable resources to focus on our core business of compliance. This conversion to electronic self-service has taken some pressure of our already over stretched PAYE customer service. While the overall total number of employments has increased by over 100,000 in 2007, to 2.3 million, there has been some reduction in the volume of telephone calls and correspondence received in the early months of 2007 compared to 2006. ROS engaged a countrywide network of ROS Liaison Officers to champion the original business service. These dedicated officers played a major role in promoting the service to local businesses and tax practitioners. Since the launch of our self service options they have been promoting the new service locally. To ensure channels of communication are kept open and operational, a Partnership Group consisting of management, staff and union representatives has been convened to notify relevant areas of prospective developments and allow opportunities for comment. Internal news magazines are used to keep staff informed of developments. PAYE uses a collection of forms based on the Revenue pluggable form architecture. Each Tax Credit and Income has been built in such a way that they can be deployed within any application and could therefore be used within any taxation system.
Return on investment
Return on investment: Not applicable / Not availableTrack record of sharing
ROS is always happy to share our experiences with interested parties, particularly agencies engaged in similar work. Since the introduction of our PAYE service in 2006 ROS have made presentations to visiting delegations from Azerbaijan, China, Japan, Norway, Turkey and the United Kingdom. ROS representatives have also presented at international conferences in Austria, Netherlands, Spain, Bulgaria and USA (Pittsburgh). Delegates attended the events from various EU and other countries with special interest in eGovernment and eTaxation matters. This sharing of information and good practice is a regular and ongoing feature of the marketing of the Irish Revenue On-line Services. We will continue to use such opportunities to share our knowledge and experiences with all interested administrations and groups. Our marketing campaign also involves regular contacts with and presentations to national organisations and representative bodies.
Lessons learnt
Lesson 1 - You are only as good as your dependencies. ROS is heavily dependant on Revenue’s internal systems for its information. We must be able to stand over the data that is supplied from these systems. In addition the comprehensive ROS PAYE online service relies heavily on the Irish Government’s public services broker Reachservices in the registration and validation processes. Unless users can easily navigate this registration system they will not be able to gain full benefit from the online service. Lesson 2 - Promotion of Buy In. During the initial development the creation of a prototype of the system allowed the various stakeholders focus on the shape of the product and helped to ensure the buy in of all stakeholders at an early stage. Lesson 3 - During the early development and testing stages for this product it was obvious that its progress was suffering as a result of the lack of business knowledge expertise. A decision was made to engage the services of a dedicated group of staff with the necessary PAYE tax expertise. The deployment of these staff ensured a much more vigorous and relevant testing process evolved.
Scope: National