HMRC publishes its long-term tech strategy

19 Feb 2016 03:15 PM

HMRC has outlined its plans for how it intends to use technology to deliver better services to its citizens.

Last week, Kristian Miller, Head of IT Strategy at HMRC, announced their long-term vision of how the department intends to use technology for delivering better services to its customers.

In particular, the strategy outlines the business transformation that the department must carry out in order to:

• re-engineer and rationalise the applications into standard reusable services, built around customers ‘subscribing’ to HMRC products;
• standardise and rationalise business processes to support online, real time customer transactions;
• implement industry standard financial accounting processes that support line of sight from individual transaction to HMRC’s core accounts;
• develop world class data analytics capabilities to support customer service, reduce cost and increase yield;
• exploit commodity software products that deliver best value for money and deploy, based on the business case, open source alternatives to proprietary products;
• decommission outdated and inflexible legacy systems, removing the risk to our mission critical services and reliance on diminishing niche skills to support and develop them;
• understand the cost drivers and, with business agreement, make balanced decisions on cost, speed, functionality, and risk, including impact of failure.

The next five years represent a critical time for HMRC as it transitions from its ten year Aspire contract, which is one of the biggest IT contracts ever signed by the UK government. The end of the Aspire contract is part of the wider Government strategy to move away from large outsourcing models to develop more in-house capability and open up the public sector tech market.

techUK members were able to help shape the strategy when HMRC presented their initial blueprints for it in January last year, and we look forward to working with HMRC to support its transformation.

Tell us what you think about the departments plan for transformation in the comment section below.

Relevant techUK publications

• techUK’s Three Point Plan for transforming public services
• techUK’s Top Four Priorities for delivering better public services through tech
• techUK’s Procuring for Innovation and Growth - Making the case for British based SMEs