related resources

on our site

news

Home page
> Management Advisory Committee > Note for file > Case studies > Australian Taxation Office
‹ Previous page

Last updated: : 18 September 2007

Note for file: A report on recordkeeping in the Australian Public Service

Case studies

‘Integral to our business’—Australian Taxation Office

Agency Profile

The Australian Taxation Office (the Tax Office) is a statutory agency under the Department of Treasury portfolio. It is responsible for the managing and shaping of tax, excise and superannuation systems that fund services for Australians, giving effect to social and economic policy.

The main areas administered are:

• income tax (including pay as you go (PAYG) withholding and instalments, capital gains tax and fringe benefits tax);
• Goods and Services Tax (GST);
• excise duty;
• fuel grants and benefit schemes;
• Superannuation;
• higher education funding (on a joint basis); and
• Australian Business Number and Australian Business Register.

Support is also provided for the delivery of community benefits with roles in other areas such as private health insurance, family assistance and cross-agency support. A further responsibility is overseeing the Australian Valuation Office.

The office currently has a staff of approximately 22,000 in 66 locations across all states of Australia. In 2005–06 the Tax Office processed 13,478,046 income tax returns; 12,865,735 activity statements and 18,118,305 payments through electronic and paper inbound channels.

ATO Environment

The Tax Office is currently undertaking a significant Change Program; the easier, cheaper and more personalised program—that will deliver new products and services for the community, and new business processes and systems for the agency. The program will introduce two core systems, replacing seventy five revenue based processing systems, for our taxpayer-related work, and enterprise-wide business processes for our employees.

The two core systems are:

• a workflow system with three components—client relationship management, case management and work management; and
• a single accounting, processing and registration system.

These two core systems are supported by systems that:

• receive correspondence from the community, independent of channel;
• generate correspondence to the community;
• store, retrieve and dispose of taxpayer documents and information products used internally and externally;
• author, approve and maintain information products used internally and externally, as well as letter templates; and
• generate reports for all levels of management within the organisation.

The Tax Office’s core administrative transactions (such as personnel and financial) are managed electronically through a single enterprise system.

Records Profile

Physical records —The Tax Office currently has 71 kilometres of physical material stored off site across 20 locations and managed through external service providers.

Electronic records —The Tax Office is currently undertaking a data profiling exercise in respect of its electronic administrative record holdings. That is, those records which are not collected or created as part of a ‘line of business’ transactional system e.g. Tax Administration or electronic personnel system, but are created using, typically, the Microsoft office suite e.g. word documents and emails. Preliminary data shows that the Tax Office has an electronic holding of approximately 25 terabytes, which is in excess of 190 million items.

The Tax Office supports and encourages electronic interactions with taxpayers. Where the transaction from the taxpayer is not electronic, the Tax Office is moving to increase the use of imaging technology. The Tax Office currently images 20 million of the 26 million forms and items of correspondence it receives annually.

People —The central records capability has 25 staff located in Canberra. Support from a distributed capability of approximately 20 business staff, the Records Management Business and Service Line Co-ordinators is also leveraged.

A Business Driven Design

In 2003 the ANAO conducted an audit on Recordkeeping in Large Organisations (ANAO Report No. 7, 2003-04). The Tax Office Executive believed that the report highlighted risks and recommendations that may be applicable to the Tax Office and commissioned a Self Assessment Review. The results of the Self Assessment identified gaps between the audit criteria and sound and better practice referenced in Report No. 7 (2003-04) and Tax Office practices.

In January 2006 the Tax Office Executive endorsed a program plan which was designed to ensure that the recordkeeping and records management capability remained contemporary and mitigated any enterprise business risks as they emerged. Support from the most senior levels in the Tax Office has ensured the organisational priority and accompanying resources have been sufficient to progress the work to date.

Recordkeeping is considered a core competency and capability that supports the business operations of the office. The Tax Office Corporate Plan 2006-07 identifies recordkeeping as a key priority: “Develop and implement policy and processes to help the Tax Office and its staff meet their recordkeeping and record management obligations”.

Our Strategy

In keeping with the ‘Sound and better practice’ recommendations made ANAO Report No. 7 (2003–04) the Tax Office established a dedicated ‘high level record keeping analysis and strategic unit to undertake systemic analysis of record keeping and information needs, to help design new record keeping systems, develop corporate record keeping policy and to assist implementation through training and review’. This unit had a focus on recordkeeping activities from a Tax Office business and operational perspective. The team was drawn together from staff experienced in the business of the Tax Office.

Governance has been a key consideration when analysing recordkeeping issues within the Tax Office. A key observation of the Self Assessment identified the need for recordkeeping measurement at a systemic level. The Tax Office has recently implemented a set of conformance measures which indicate, at a broad level, the behavioural shifts in the creation, storage and disposal of records. The conformance indicators are reported on a quarterly basis to the Tax Office Executive.

Guiding Frameworks

COSO (Committee of Sponsoring Organisations) Framework

Report No. 7 (2003-04) utilised the Committee of Sponsoring Organisations of the Treadway Commission (1992) COSO framework which is recognised as a comprehensive framework for internal control. This framework, as used by the ANAO, provided the Tax Office with a sensible approach to the issues that a large organisation encounters and recognised that recordkeeping is part of the business of the agency and not a separate/ distinct capability. The COSO framework has been used as a constant reference point.

The framework supports a risk based assessment approach, a prioritisation of key aspects and investment commensurate with the value of the information asset. In many respects, it was a non-traditional approach to recordkeeping analysis and design. It treated recordkeeping as a normal business issue and applied standard project management methodology.

Certificate of Assurance Process

The Tax Office’s governance and assurance framework and the Certificate of Assurance process is fundamental to the recordkeeping assurance activities. It was recognised early in the analysis that the Tax Office had substantial, robust and well understood governance arrangements that would support the need of the Record keeping and Records Management Compliance Plan. The use of the existing framework avoided the need to develop anything extraordinary to the business of the Tax Office.

Information Management Strategic Framework

The Tax Office has an Information Management Strategic Framework which assists the office manage its information effectively in all respects as a core resource. This framework is further supported by the Information Management Strategic Plan.

Key Features

Two key features of the Tax Office’s approach have been the:

• design and implementation of the recordkeeping assurance process; and
• conformance assessment of new systems and the decommissioning of legacy systems.

Recordkeeping Assurance Process

In implementing the shifts that the office required, the assurance process was designed as a three phased approach.

The phases are:

• Inform and Educate —ensures that all staff are aware of the Record keeping policy and educated in the application of the policy in their day-to-day work.
• Act and Comply— staff with the understanding act in a manner that:
• brings about conformance with the recordkeeping policy; and
• is integrated with and contextualised in business operations.
• Monitor and Assure —systems and processes are in place to measure conformance at an operational and systemic level.

This approach, supported by a Record keeping and Records Management Compliance Plan, provides a transparent approach to the enterprise monitoring and assurance activities. Staff are aware of what is expected of them to conform and the types of questions and evidence that may be required in order to support the assurances given.

Assurance is provided at the Division Head level and submitted to the Commissioner.

The Certificate of Assurance process is supplemented by Self Assessment activities undertaken on an ‘as needed’ basis. Benchmarks have also been established through the use of the Public Service Commission State of the Service Report series and other public, private and industry information.

Currently, the Tax Office is transitioning from the Inform and Educate phase to the Act and Comply phase of the Compliance plan. In this phase we have focussed on support products and tools that clearly articulate the business value of good recordkeeping.

The Compliance Plan is actively supported by the Business and Service Line Records Management co-ordinators. Focus for these co-ordinators is translating recordkeeping into a business perspective and ensuring that initiatives are correctly sequenced to support overall compliance.

Conformance Assessment

New systems being introduced as part of the Change Program are now subject to a conformance assessment that is aligned with the Certificate of Assurance process. The use of the existing Certificate of Assurance process has enabled recordkeeping conformance to be established as a design intervention.

Decommissioning of legacy systems has also been effected utilising a risk based approach. Many of these systems were designed, built and implemented prior to any contemporary policy being in place. The Australian Standard AS ISO 15489 (2002) Records Management was used a guide. Focus was placed on the create/collect and manage functions as well as the disposal process. The outcomes of this assessment are again reported through the Certificate of Assurance process.

Influencing the Future and Securing the Past

The Tax Office recognises that good recordkeeping and records management are an integral part of doing business in the Tax Office.

Their integration into enterprise business processes, the management environment around those processes and systems support remain key challenges, as does the ability to influence the program of change to business process design and technology advancements.

For further information on the recordkeeping practices in the Australian Taxation Office please contact:

Maxine Shakespeare
Office of the Chief Knowledge Officer
Phone: 02 4293 1540

Australian Public Service Commission   A-Z index   Privacy, legal & copyright   Contact us
This page can be found at www.apsc.gov.au/mac/noteforfilecasestudiesato.htm