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Last updated: 27 March 2009
HM Revenue and Customs [External Website] is responsible for collecting tax revenue, paying Tax Credits and Child Benefits and strengthening the UK’s frontiers.
The reporting year 2006/07 saw an improvement in IT projects being delivered on time. Fifty three major projects were delivered with 93% of our key projects being successfully implemented to schedule, demonstrating world class delivery in both public and private sectors.
This has been made possible by our ‘Road to World Class’ initiative of implementing a clear operating model ; our suppliers (IBIS – Intelligent Buyer, Intelligent Supplier); developing our people’s professional skills (IT Profession); and developing our attributes and culture (HPT – High Performing Teams).
Customer focus underpins all our activities – we put the customer at the heart of what we do.We use IT to improve the customer experience and reduce the compliance and administrative burden, help individuals and businesses pay the right amount of tax and receive the tax credits and payments to which they are entitled.
HMRC continues to be at the forefront of government eservices, supporting more than 250 major information technology systems that underpin the full range of business activities.
Information Management Solutions (IMS) delivers information and communication technology to over 75,000 end users across HMRC, while the overall IT strategic framework aligns to HMRC’s Transformation Programme.
IT professions: helping develop our IT skills
The Government IT Profession Core Skills framework is capable of supporting a world class organisation and skills management. Embedding this framework within our business is well underway through the delivery of over 150 professional development events planned for this financial year. To date, over 2,000 man days of professional skills development have been deployed through the HMRC IT Profession.
High Performing Teams (HPT)
The HPT Programme is now well underway. The primary objective of the HPT programme is to transform IMS into a High Performing Team by raising performance at individual, team and enterprise level.
Construction industry goes online
A new Construction Industry Scheme, requiring deductions on account of tax and National Insurance liabilities from payments to subcontractors in the construction industry, was successfully brought in from April 2007. It allows and encourages most processes to be conducted online; over 25% of contractors now file their returns online. Overall, implementation has gone well with encouraging industry feedback, particularly from software providers and users.
STRIDE – efficiency gains from upgrading systems
In the largest infrastructure project in Europe, we upgraded over 1,000 file servers and 106,000 workstations in 750 offices across the UK, including five Customs cutters.We delivered over 700 new versions of corporate applications including a new high availability email service to enable all staff in the new HMRC to communicate and access information freely, promoting collaboration and efficiency. STRIDE was delivered on time and under budget.
Growth in online tax returns
Citizens and businesses can file tax returns and check information online across key taxes. Take up of HMRC Online Services continues to increase year on year with online Self Assessment Returns increasing to 3 million (from 2 million the year before) on 31st January 2007 and Employer Returns increasing to 1.45m in 2006’07 (1.1million the year before).
HMRC has set up a dedicated ‘Carter’ Programme to implement the recommendations of the Review with an inspirational goal of universal electronic delivery of tax returns from businesses and IT literate individuals by 2012.
In 2007’08 we are focusing our work on Self Assessment, the online service which is most mature, has the greatest customer use and therefore offers the greatest benefit to customers.
We are investing to ensure that the online services infrastructure is robust, reliable and thoroughly tested, carrying out capacity testing of our services, and providing third party software vendors with the ability to test their services much earlier than previously.
We have undertaken extensive consultation with a wide range of external customers to ensure that we are prioritising our investment on those things that our customers tell us are important to them. This approach will help to ensure the successful delivery of the Carter recommendations and enable customers to continue to influence how the services will look, feel and continue to develop.