SOA in Tax Administration

•Meeting DG Taxud and SKAT

•Friday the 12th of October 2012

•Copenhagen

Agenda - tentative

• Introduction

• SKAT Organization and challenges

• SOA implementation and IT technical aspects

• Lunch 12:30-13:15 SKAT cantina

• SOA governance and methodology

• Break 14:30

• Possible further collaboration

• AOB

• End of meeting 16:00

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Danish Tax Administration - SKAT

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•Reduction of staff from above 11,000 (2005) to below 8,000 (2011)• Merger of local and state tax administration 2005

• SKAT is responsible for taxes, VAT, duties, customs, collection, assessment of real estate, vehicles administration, tax on gambling

• IT Architecture office• Supports business development, IT-projects, system owners – C2C/G• Architect – Plan – Build• Staff: 27 – mix of Architects, Service Modellers, Tech Coordinators…

SKAT Organization and challenges

Business Strategy Tax Administration

• Ultimate KPI: maximise compliance + maintain tax payer confidence

• Challenge: Reduce cost (of IT)

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Improvecompliance

Mission

Improved compliance

Outcome

EFFECTIVENES

Cost effectiveness

Serv

ice

Au

ditin

g

Deb

tc

olle

ctio

n

Rep

ortin

g

Business process

SKAT Organization and challenges

Effective Tax Administration = Digitization & Automation

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

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100%

´87 ´88 ´92 ´93 ´94 ´95 ´96 ´97 ´98 ´99 ´00 ´01 ´02 ´03 ´04 ´05 '06 '07 '08 '09

Paper

DeclareOnline

”No Touch”

Citizens e-declarations 1987 - 2011

SKAT Organization and challenges

Page 5

Service Reporting Auditing Debt Collection

Architecture

IGIS

Platform

Business process

Process owner

System owner

IT Governance in SKAT - IGIS

Process owner

System owner

Process owner

System owner

Process owner

System owner

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Projects

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The SOA based modernisation program requires us to establish the architectural foundations for:

Increased efficiency – reuse of services Leaner and more transparent administration Faster, cheaper and safer implementations of changes Reduction of information technology risks – no -legacy debt Facilitation of competition on it-solutions – no vendor lock-in Simplification and normalisation of the access to the IT systems Securing a clear separation of IT systems Commitment from the main parties of the organisation

SOA objectives

Lessons learned

Side 8 torsdag 20. april 2023

Side 9 torsdag 20. april 2023

Strategy

Main drivers

Main drivers for the SOA modernization at Skatteministeriet

•Reducing cost of operating it

•Easier integrations and reuse

Strategy was to centralize and gain from order of magnitude – one platform technology suite and one integration operations vendor.

Recent change of strategy:

•Federate platform to multiple vendors

Lessons learned

SOA becomes complicated on its own

• Unknown performance hit on legacy-systems (expensive MIPS)

• Long road to realization

• Technology is not the driver, business is

What we would have done differently

• Focus on keeping things simple

• Focus on business case in every decision

• Clear distribution of roles and authority

SOA Transformation

Side 10 torsdag 20. april 2023

Governance and Organization

Main drivers

Governance is done through having a central resource pool for technical resources lend to projects. These resource handle governance and implementation of guidelines.

For each application there is a process and system owner, whom also owns all provided services.

Development, maintenance and operations are outsourced.

Lessons learned

Key skills needed for success

• Mediator

• Business modelers

Primary need is the skill to assess consequences of decisions.

Responsibility for resources and time need to influence architectural decisions in order to avoid technology driving the development.

Place responsibility for maintenance and operations close to development partner during handover.

SOA Transformation

Side 11 torsdag 20. april 2023

Technology

Main drivers

Architecture based on global principles that all implementations must follow. The idea is that the architecture is clear and determining for the solutions. E.g. all integrations must be services.

Public contracts was the main driver for waterfall method. Now a change towards more agile methodologies are piloted.

Lessons learned

The architecture needs to be flexible in such a manner that solutions can deviate from guidelines, whenever

•It is reducing cost or time

•Not impacting other applications

The complexity in going from white-board to operating solution was unforeseen. Thus delays and added cost resulted in weakened business cases.

In the future focus will be on lowering risk and building solutions gradually.

SOA Transformation

Side 12 torsdag 20. april 2023

Support and Maintenance

Main drivers

The goal was to gain a better overview of integrations and the architecture. This was planned through a shared service modeling tool and service catalogue.

The documentation continues to grow, yet the necessary quality has not followed. Hence a change towards fewer service, with more focus on maintaining the overview is planned.

Lessons learned

The complexity of SOA is making root-cause analysis more difficult. This is worsened by integrations over multiple vendors.

Single immature or poorly performing vendors cause serious problems across SOA.

The modules of applications and systems in the architecture does not always match the business structures and processes.

SOA Transformation