IRD looks at huge case management revamp

By ADAM GIFFORD

Inland Revenue is to overhaul its case-management system following a similar multimillion-dollar project at the Ministry of Social Development.

Field delivery manager Martin Scott said the department was responding to a review by the Auditor-General's Office which recommended it overhaul the way it managed its dealings with taxpayers.

Inland Revenue has 4700 staff across 22 sites and processes up to 14 million returns and payments a year.

It will replace several existing case-management systems which run as part of Inland Revenue's core FIRST mainframe-based system or on separate databases.

Scott said the project would enable the department to "acquire and implement an enterprise-wide case-management system that will help the organisation to better manage and automate case-related activities and processes within and across all business areas".

He said the department wanted a packaged solution to manage investigations and form an archive for case histories. This should allow centralised monitoring and reporting capabilities for taxpayer and customer-related transactions.

Predicted benefits included faster resolution of cases and better-quality information.

Most importantly, the department hoped it would increase revenue by having better information on where cases were up to and by taking a more consistent and timely approach.

Scott said the department had completed the strategy development phase of the project, identifying business needs, investigating technology options and mapping out current and proposed data sets, applications and technology architectures.

The IRD hoped to choose a software vendor and implementation partner by the middle of next year. The implementation would be staged so audit functions were brought onto the system first, followed by return and debt collection, child support and other business areas.

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Social Development still hasn't decided who will install its case-management system, which uses software from Irish firm Curam.

Acting chief information officer Marc Warner said that meant it would not start building the proof of concept until next April or May.

Staff are now working with Curam to determine how much of the needed functionality is already in the software, and how much will have to be modified.