The Revenue Service Transformation Programme was established with three main objectives:
- Improve customer satisfaction,
- Improve services and create a single organisational structure, and
- Significantly reduce operating costs.
This is a major programme to create long-term change that benefits Islanders. To deliver on its objectives, the Programme will target multiple areas - It aims to
- Meet the changing customer expectations of government services, in particular the demand for digital service solutions;
- Remove the duplication of effort and information as a result of a separate tax and contributions functions and systems;
- Tackle the significant IT risks created by ageing technology solutions with increasingly limited and more costly support;
- Meet the demands of new and evolving international regulatory requirements; and
- Make the most of opportunities for efficiencies by modern technology and automating processes.
The Programme has three phases. The first two phases have been delivered.
Phase 1 - Inception:
- During this initial Phase, the Programme was established, and the scope of work and programme objectives agreed. A new organisational structure along with desired working practices were designed to facilitate the changes to be made in phase 2.
Phase 2 - Design:
- During Phase 2 of the Revenue Service Transformation, a single service was created combining what had previously been two separate services, Income Tax and Social Security. These two services now work as one, in the same space, which also meant one of the States' properties could be vacated.
- During this Phase, new initiatives were also introduced to put more focus on our customers, and what improvements they want. As a result we now hold a regular customer forum, where we ask a selection of customers for feedback and input on delivered and future initiatives. We also spent time gathering customer insights on the current practices and customer experience at this time.
Phase 3 - Delivery (Current Phase):
- Right now the Revenue Service is in Phase 3 of its transformation programme. This Phase has already seen an online Revenue Service portal launched on the new, secure MyGov platform. The Revenue Service features are the first to be made available on MyGov, but other services from across the public sector will soon be added to this platform, making it a 'one-stop-shop' for customers to access a wide range of public services digitally, and at their convenience.
- In the Revenue Service portal on MyGov we have created a new Personal Tax Return, with an automated estimated assessment and other features that make completing your return easier.
- Behind the scenes, we are also transferring data off of our older systems onto a single new secure database.
- Over the next few months, we will be making further enhancements to the Personal Tax Return, such as including pre-population so that data entered by a customer using the previous year's return is automatically available in the form and doesn't have to be re-entered. Many of these enhancements are in response to feedback received from customers who used the tool.
- We are also working on an auto-assessment tool to help the Service efficiently complete assessments and we are building a new online registration tool, which aims to combine tax and social security registration processes into one place; helping customers and staff alike.
- The Programme will also be preparing the Service for Independent Taxation. Check back here for more updates as we start to progress this and other transformation initiatives.
- Phase 3 covers all of the delivery elements of the Programme and is due to be complete by March 2023.
Information about the earlier phase 1 & 2 development work can be found here:
The Transformation of Income Tax and Contributions Services - States of Guernsey (gov.gg)
Medium Term Financial Plan - States of Guernsey (gov.gg)
