Suma is a public agency that provides tax administration services to 141 town councils in the province of Alicante. Suma has implemented an efficient system which has enabled the municipalities to (1) improve ratios in tax collection; (2) increase the accessibility of information to citizens in its customer service office or mobile offices and Internet virtual offices; (3) improve the quality of work for employees by providing tools for the autonomous and global solution of tax-payers problems.
This model, mainly based on technology but also with organisational components, has proved to be an excellent solution for other local authorities in Spain.
A key factor of this model is the service is provided by a public body. Contrarily to other outsourcing schemes based on private companies, the profits -if any- return to the citizens as Suma is a municipal structure and has no stakeholders.
Policy Context
Suma is a public, province-based agency that provides tax administration services to the municipal councils in the province of Alicante, Spain. It operates independently of other state and municipal bodies -it has its own board of councillors- but is closely linked to other organisations and stakeholders: city councils, Central Tax Agency, Cadastre Office, Vehicle Registry, notaries, banks, among others.
Its foundation dates back to 1990 and it is the evolution of former tax-collection services of the Provincial Council. Since then, Suma management has had a clear determination to foster an organisation capable of providing high quality tax administration services toall city councils and citizens of the province. These efforts have finally resulted in an efficient tax administration system much appreciated by the public and also become a source of inspiration for other local authorities in Spain. Suma is legally accountable to the Provincial Council (Diputacion) and its Board is chaired by the President of this Council.
Description of target users and groups
As a province-based organisation Suma provides local tax administration services to the 141 municipal councils in the province of Alicante, surface area 5,817 Km2. This province ranks as the 5th most populous of the country, with almost 2 million inhabitants, from which at least 350,000 are not Spanish, one of the highest ratio in Spain. This part of the Spanish Mediterranean has undergone an enormous urban growth, mainly linked to the second homes for nationals and also for citizens from UK, Germany and other Western European countries.
In the present economic context the role of a supramunicipal authority is crucial, as not all councils have enough resources to carry out the collection activity: updating of tax censuses (real estate properties, motor vehicles', companies) as well the list of payers for other taxes and fees such as capital gains, administrative fines, waste disposal fees, etc. The existence of a supramunicipal authority dealing with all these issues is perhaps the most sensible and cost-effective way for the councils as it uses "economies of scale + dimension" management principle. For small towns it is probably the only solution, as they cannot afford to have their own information systems, nor tax specialists nor resorces to do the rest of billing and collection processes. For customers it is also a simple scheme as they only have to contact a single agency to pay their local taxes
To fully understand the complexity of this activity we must keep in mind that the information on local taxes is not only in the hands of the municipalities, but is rather spread. Council must establish agreements with the State Tax Agency, Central Vehicle Registry, Central Cadastre, notaries, among others.
This scenario defines the target group of this case: city councils, citizens, business owners and in general any person related to the council.
Description of the way to implement the initiative
New product and service developments are based on requests from three sources: Suma management, local authorities and the general public. Suma management set specific goals in the annual strategic plan. These aims are published in the Annual Report so that a public commitment is made before the general public.
The council representatives propose new services at the Annual Meeting between Suma and the council representatives. At this meeting, usually held in February, the revenue results of the previous fiscal year are presented and discussed. Suma officers gather the suggestions and requests that will form the development plans for the following year.
The general public also partipates with their proposals. The Opina quality programme (Opina = Your opinions count) is an initiative to make the customers voice be heard. Suggestions willl be included in the annual plans after a close analysis Suma board of Directors evaluate every year the level of achievement and provide new strategic lines for the new developments.
The services are delivered in a multi-chanel scheme:
1. Suma office network. The office network of Suma in the province of Alicante has 44 centres offering assistance to the taxpayer. Each deals primarily with its own area, although the centralised database enables us to resolve taxpayer issues anywhere in the province. The offices are permanently connected to the central office by broadband. The network has an automatic back-up system that operates in case of incident at any of the access points.
2. Mobile units. In addition to the permanent offices, Suma has mobile units visiting regularly the remote rural areas. These customer service points have the same operational facilities as those in the branch offices. They consist of a laptop computer, printer and a broadband connection, allowing secured link to the central database.
3. The Local Tax Contact Center was reinforced in 2009. The service has evolved from a small telephone service in the past to a professional, efficient call center serviced by up to 26 operators. This service is compliant with the e-goverment Act that came into force on 1 Jan 2010. VoIP technology, call recording facilities and SMS, email, fax integrated systems allow call centre agent to resolve most customer enquiries on line. This service is multilingual and opened to public every working day from 8-21h and Saturdays 10-14h.
4. Virtual Office for taxpayers Suma Internet Office allows any digitally identified taxpayer to carry out a variety of transactions: Visualise account balance and payment records; submit applications, claims and written documents ; Update personal contact details; Set-up direct debit orders; Obtain clearance certificates; Set-up a personal payment plan; Follow-up of submitted procedures; Create a tax shopping-basket and pay on-line with credit card or standing order. The website also offers some basic transaction (payment and invoices) to non-digitally identified customers as long as they can provide the secure validation code printed in all Suma documents.
5. Secured Portal for councils. Each city council uses a secured connection to access Suma database in a 24x7 scheme. The system allows online searches in their taxpayers accounts, an update of the municipal revenue balance and a number of activity reports that can be downloaded.
6. Employee portals and Intranet, where procedings are available and general announcements are made.
Technology solution
The use of technology is compulsory for the tax administration activity as large sets data must be processed. But the technology must not be considered the objective, quite the opposite it must be regarded as a means to gain efficiency.
To achieve the excellence in the tax administration activity, organisations must be customer centric. Bearing this in mind, it is easy to infer that technology in tax administration means integrated software with a one-stop-shop approach; comprehensive work flow systems where every document or form is included in the information system; easy-to-use internet websites with on-line information and payment options; customer service network connected by broadband lines; mobility to allow service in remote areas and real-time process monitoring.
Suma uses the following Information System to provide the necessary services
- 4-processor cluster Server to manage the central database (tax administration)
- S.A.N system providing service to all servers
- A number of servers for the various services: Intranet (knowledge management), Internet website, digital cartography, testing enviroment for programming, virtual office, council portal, web services.
- Servers for vertical services: accounting, human resources, employee portal, intranet
- Peripheral security systems
Since 2010 the information system has a backup facility in a remote secured site. Monthly the services are balanced between both sites to ensure full functionality in case of emergency. This project was partially funded by the EU.
The software solution of the core activity is not commercial. It has been designed and coded by Suma and it is mantained with own resources. Virtualisation by VMware is thoroughly used. The database is ORACLE and the web services are based on open standards when possible (Jboss, Linux, Java, XML..) Digital-map services are based on .NET architecture. Middleware uses Microsoft and other market products.
This is a overview of its features:
- Integrates technologies, allowing every piece of information relevant to taxes to be included in the database, be it alphanumerical, graphical, photographic or scanned images.
- The central database is simultaneuosly accessed and updated by all the users, employees, taxpayers, municipalities. The economic information is updated no later than 24 hours after the tax bill has been paid.
- It implements principles of simplification of procedures, bottleneck removal and reengineering.
- It allows multi-task of employees in real terms, thanks to a simple online guide messaging; No tax specialists are required in normal operations as a result any employee can resolve most cases.
- There are online connections to external databases (State vehicle register, Cadastre, State Tax Agency); this results in less delays.
- All procedures are embedded in the software. Satellite and offline software solutions are always avoided.
- Powerful EIS/BI tools to monitor the activity by the management on a daily basis.
- Every customer service office point allows on-line payment , as there exists a connection to virtual banking.
- Digital cartography and aerial photograph is accessible from the software. The information is stored in the central database, but as it is smartly structured it can be delivered very rapidly
- Mobile points allows employees to perform the same operations as those at any branch office.
Let us finally point out thata this software is not finished yet, in fact will surely never be, as new ideas from on-going strategic plans are implemented every year.
Technology choice: Proprietary technology, Standards-based technology, Open source softwareMain results, benefits and impacts
There is no common scale of indicators in the Spanish local tax system to establish comparisons or benchmarking between councils. Since its foundation Suma publishes the Annual Report, accessible on the website and disseminates results widely.
Suma organises debate forums and has put forward a multitude of indicators that might be applied in this activity. At its 2001 annual conference, Suma proposed the use of the following three indicators which might be used to measure parameters of efficacy, cost-efficiency and quality for a supramunicipal body.
Efficacy: Percentage of tax bills collected in the year over the number of issued bills. In the case of Suma this figure has risen from 75% to the present 96%
Cost-Efficiency: The cost of the service for the municipalities is a fixed rate depending on the tax and on the procedure. The total cost ranges 4-5% of the revenue. This cost comprises the operational costs, bulk mailing, personnel in the customer service network and any other cost related to enforcement. The surcharges are paid by the delinquent payer.
Quality: Suma performs an independent survey every 2 years to check the citizens perception of its services. In the case of Suma the score has risen from 6.5 out of 10 in 1998 to 8.5 today.
The challenge for Suma is not achieving good results in one of the three indicators, but rather achieving a balanced improvement.
Another qualitative evidence is what competitors or colleagues think. In this respect we are proud to say that Suma has been proposed as an efficient model of local taxation management by other local authorities. A clear proof of that is that this model has awoken great interest in other councils and organisations both inside and outside Spain. Suma has helped other municipalities to improve their results. It has participated in study reports and consultancy papers about local taxation in Portugal and Spain. As detailed below Suma has hosted numerous study tours for different national and international organisations and it has also been frequently visited by other local authorities of Spain eager to know more about our system.
It is very unique that this model has also been implemented outside Alicante Province. Majadahonda City Council (Madrid Region), Gran Canaria (Canary Island) and Albacete Provice are the cases at the present time. In all cases the collection indexes have dramatically improved.
Return on investment
Return on investment: Not applicable / Not availableTrack record of sharing
Suma is a regular speaker in conferences and courses about local taxation. It has participated in a large number of events related to the different aspect of its model: human resources techniques, taxation and technology. Here is a selection of them.
October 2002. 6 Congreso municipalistas. UIM. Dominican Republic
February 2003. Congreso de la Asociacion Nacional de Municipios portugueses. Lisboa
Mayo 2004. Servicios Internet suministrados por Suma. Alicante
February 2005. International Conference on Local Taxation and Valuation. IRRV. Alicante
June 2005. Informatica tributaria. Malaga.
August 2005, Valuacion sin fronteras. IAAO conference. Mexico City.
June 2006, Software for tax administration. The case of Suma. Canary Islands
July 2006, European Mediterranean Conference on Information Systems. Alicante.
October 2006, Encuentros de Gestión y polÃticas públicas. Toledo
May 2007, TecnologÃas de la información y recursos humanos. Alicante -
University of Alicante, summer courses of 2004, 2005, 2006
April 2005. Modelo supramunicipal de Suma. LIncoln Institute. Curitiba (Brasil)
September 2007. IRRV Scotland Conference, Crieff, Perth UK
September 2008, Reno, NV, International Association of Assessing Officers annual conferenceÂ
June 2009, International Property Tax, Warsaw International Conference
September 2009, Louisville, Kentucky, International Association of Assessing Officers Annual conference.
September 2010. Harrogate. IRRV annual conference
September 2011. Phoenix, Arizona, International Association of Assesing officers
Presentations to Spanish Provincial Councils. Numerous presentations and work sessions have been given to delegations from different Spanish city and provincial councils that have visited our premises
Study Tours hosted by Suma. February 2005. International conference of the Institute of Revenues Ratings and Valuation: taxation experts from 41 countries; November 2006. European Project "Modernization of Municipalities in Syria". Experts from 6 Syrian cities and consultants; February 2007. European Project DACSSILTAX. Experts from UK, Bulgaria, Czech Republic and Romania
European Projects. Suma has been a partner in a European project, named DACSSILTAX "Developing Administration and Customer Service Skills in local Taxation". Some aspects of Suma model have also been included in the training material. Several articles were published along this project. Suma is at present developing a Leonardo Mobility Project together with 3 UK City Councils and IRRV to exchange experiences in the field of local taxation Customer service. Also a mobility project in partnership with IRRV in 2011 allowed Suma to visit a number of UK city councils as well as other interested organizations. Other partnership EU-projects are in progress.
Apart from these good-practice dissemination activities, Suma has participated in some initiatives to improve tax collection indexes in other territories. Majadahonda city councuil, Grand Canary Island and Albacete Provincial Council have strategic agreements with Suma.
Suma experience in tax administration as a supramuncipal agency is much appreciated by national and international bodies. It is the only known case of a Spanish Local Government body providing tax administration services to other local authorities out of its natural provincial context. This initiative was awarded in 2007 by the Ministry for Public Administration.
This model has also been positively valued by other relevant international local tax-related organisations: IAAO, IPTI, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, IRRV. Suma has made consultancy papers for Madrid City Council and for the National Association of Portuguese Municipalities.
Suma usually takes part in training programmes of the Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces and participates in post-graduates courses (master in tax administration) at the University of Alicante.
Lessons learnt
1) Despite the complexity of the local taxation in Spain, it is feasible to develop a model that can be used by more than one municipality and by more than one province.
2) The model has been designed and implemented by a public body. The key point is is that the profits -if any- return to the citizens, rather than to private shareholders.
3) We are convinced that Suma supramunicipal model can be used by other countries. The implementation level will greatly depend on the context but the key principles remain.
4) ICT is compulsory but it must implement the customer-centricity concept to be efficient. Technology must (a) reduce the life-time of the tax, (b)improve efficiency by reducing errors and botlenecks, (c)increase the multitask-level of personnel, (d) makes things easier to customers.
5) Suma model is based on ROI-based technology, motivating HHRR policy and organizational issues.
Scope: Local (city or municipality)