The way
Chapter 11. Roadmap to Modernize a Tax Information System
ICT as a Strategic Tool to Leapfrog the Efficiency of Tax Administrations
An efficient Tax Information System (TIS) is essential for tax management. Currently, the tax administrations depend on these systems to exercise the functions defined by their legal mandate and the malfunctioning of all or parts of the system puts at risk tax collection and control and, consequently, the financing of public policies. The dynamic nature of tax policies and regulations requires a flexible IT system that can accommodate these changes in a timely manner, without jeopardizing the normal execution of its components, and maintaining the expected performance.
These challenges are compounded by adjusting functional weaknesses, expanding institutional coverage, improving capacities for data exchange with other institutions, dealing with computer platform problems, and facilitating the provision of more and better services to taxpayers. In addition, the technological landscape has changed in the last decades, providing new alternatives of architectures, methodologies, services and technologies that can be considered to face these challenges.
In this changing context of high complexity, a central question stands out: does my Tax Information System have the conditions to continue modernizing in functional and technological terms or must I build a new one, from scratch?
For this important decision of the tax administration, which involves the allocation of large financial, human and methodological resources, it is better to have a roadmap containing the instructions and incidents to guide the required assessments and decision making.
This roadmap should be based on technological and functional assessments related to the current system, status of enabling factors (degree of preparation of the tax administration to effectively implement a modern Tax Information System), benchmarks of current levels of services provided vis a vis international references, in addition to a specific diagnosis for estimating the use of information technologies.
Based on this information, one must have methods to support a critical decision: to modernize by replacing components or to replace the entire system? Two non-exclusive methods are presented: one, based on empirical assessments of the “limits of severity” of technological and functional problems; the other, in which the information generated in previous stages is used to feed a specialized technical / functional team, preferably with the support of external experts.
The decision to replace an entire Tax Information System is radical, costly, complex and demands the participation of all levels of decision making within and outside the tax administration. But sometimes substitution is essential for an adequate evolution of the services provided to the tax administration, taxpayers and other stakeholders in the medium or long term. Due to its strong organizational impact, the final decision must always be made by a high-level panel, made up of the stakeholders in the tax administration, such as the general management and the directors of the business areas, supported by the information originated by the aforementioned evaluations and positioning of experts (internal and external).
On the other hand, replacing individual components of the Tax Information System is a less traumatic alternative, but sometimes it may not be feasible, mainly due to construction features of the original system.
If the decision is to replace the whole system, we must mainly evaluate:
In addition, strategies for temporary coexistence between the system to be replaced and the new one must be considered.
The strategy for replacing components depends on the construction model of the original Tax Information System, and will basically consider its degree of cohesion (measure of the degree of functional relationship between the elements of a module or subsystem) and coupling (measure of the degree of interdependence between modules). Three alternatives stand out:
The modernization of a Tax Information System also offers the opportunity to evaluate and improve the quality of the available data. The enormous amount of internal and external data that a tax administration handles, used in transactional and data analysis processes, requires the development and implementation, if it does not exist, of a policy for data governance.
Current tax information systems are strongly based on the exchange of digital information with taxpayers and society in general. Therefore, as an external factor for its success, there is the degree of digital inclusion of society.
It should be considered that, regardless of whether the Tax Information System uses customized solutions (developed with own staff and/or hired resources) or COTS or whether it operates the system with own staff or third party services, it is essential that the tax administration holds knowledge, with own staff, minimally of the areas of system architecture and data administration.
In conclusion, a Tax Information System is also a form of knowledge repository for the tax administration: when it is transformed into software, the knowledge becomes active and forces officials and taxpayers to put it to use. It is different from manuals and books, which are also repositories of knowledge, but passive.
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