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The government of Jamaica simplifies and centralizes e-Filing - WebSphere Insights

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by Amanda McKeon

The government of Jamaica simplifies and centralizes e-Filing

With IBM WebSphere DataPower and IBM WebSphere Forms Published October 10, 2012
Let's face itno one likes to pay taxes. Sure, the act might bring a sense of accomplishment, but all-in-all it's simply an obligation. It was made all the more difficult for the citizens of Jamaica because they needed to file several different tax types every month. And while citizens could pay a few tax types online since 2004, they still needed to physically file at one of the government's offices, making the whole process quite frustrating.

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The change was inconvenient for the government of Jamaica as well. Each department acted as its own entity, procuring and monitoring software and services which created repeat funding for one type of infrastructure. Once the government realized that continuing in this disparate manner would result in lost revenue, citizen dissatisfaction, and increased costs for administration, they decided it was time to find a solution.

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The move to a single, simplified infrastructure

In 2004 the government of Jamaica had worked with Fiscal Services Ltd to create a transactional portal through which citizens could pay taxes online, so it was an easy decision to turn to the company again to solve their current e-filing problem. It was great timing because Fiscal Services had just started their own internal transformation project in 2008. Before the transformation, the company was responsible only for the government's revenue collection, but the new mandate extended the company's responsibilities to support the government of Jamaica in all areas.

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We knew we needed to build a shared infrastructure that would benefit all of the departments and agencies of the government.
Antroy Ashton, Enterprise Architect, Fiscal Services

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Antroy Ashton, the newly appointed Enterprise Architect at Fiscal Services, was in charge of finding the government an e-filing solution. Our own transformation allowed us to look at all of the pieces of the government as a whole as opposed to how we were operating before in small projects, he says. We knew we needed to build a shared infrastructure that would benefit all of the departments and agencies of the government. In fact, the Ministry of Finance (MOF), under the advice of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), recommended merging all of the existing statutory tax types into one amalgamated document with the ability to delineate the different taxes by line item and simplify the e-filing process. The Inland Revenue Department (IRD) provided Fiscal Services with a Vision document which stated the highlevel concepts and key success criteria the stakeholders wanted achieved with the project. For example, security was a top priority due to the sensitive nature of the transactions. With these concepts in mind, Fiscal Services began searching for a technical provider.

A natural fit
The government needed a tool that could provision an online facility to capture electronic documents. With this type of tool, a single document could be created and embedded with the business logic and data to move easily across the platform. After looking at several different companies, they chose IBM as the provider. We had worked with IBM in the past and IBM WebSphere Forms is a very document-centric approach to forms development says Ashton. And since our company and the government were already using several tools

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The government of Jamaica simplifies and centralizes e-Filing - WebSphere Insights

inclusive of IBM WebSphere, it was just a natural fit for the project. The government was especially impressed by the IBM WebSphere DataPower Integration Appliance XI50. It basically acts as a layer on top of the infrastructure, creating a service-oriented architecture (SOA). This way, all requests go through the IBM WebSphere DataPower appliance before reaching the government's internal systems creating a single configuration point enabling stronger security.

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The government, with Fiscal Services' help, implemented IBM Forms in three phases to deal with the rollout of different e-forms. The first and second phases focused on requirements gathering and creating a system that could easily accommodate new e-forms with minor enhancements. This was the most elaborate part of the project and took approximately seven months to complete. Phase three gave citizens the ability to do their annual and monthly returns in one single e-formthe Statutory Amalgamation Form (S02). This process was tricky because having one single e-form didn't negate the fact that citizens could still go file at any physical government office if that was their preference. We had to leverage the infrastructure so that returns will go through a central facility and be processed from one single point going forward, Ashton says. Phase three is still being assessed because Jamaica's financial year starts in April, but Ashton doesn't see the need for any major changes unless new business cases to solve.

Overcoming the roadblocks

While the IBM Forms implementation went relatively smoothly, no project of this magnitude comes without challenges. The project faced resistance especially when it came to creating a collaborative effort between the different government entities. The technology was very different than the old system and government employees were fearful that the project wasn't going to work. The project team quieted these fears by hosting numerous meetings with the government's management users, clients, and stakeholders, and instituted an extensive training program. The program included government employees as well as representatives from several well-known accounting firms. This way, the accounting firms could show citizens how to file with the new system. This was a challenge in and of itself because we had to extend ourselves beyond our portfolio, explains Ashton. Due to the great number of people within the government that would be using the technology, a train-the-trainer approach was used. The technical team trained several power users on how to use IBM Forms and how to monitor the underlying architecture, and those users trained employees at each government office. Though it took a significant amount of time, Ashton says it was worth the effort because once the entire staff was comfortable with the technology, the stakeholders were more confident that the project would be a success.

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The benefits of comfort and availability

Though it's only been a short time since the project's completion, the government of Jamaica has already reaped significant benefits. For instance, the online system has brought in nearly $20 billion in revenue in the last two years, coming in second compared to only one of the 28 physical locations. In addition, from 2008 to 2011 the government saw a 1,000 percent increase in the number of tax returns filed online. The new system has also helped the government reduce capital spend and get administration costs under control due to only having one, centralized infrastructure. I do believe that it's a great model, Ashton says. And it's a model that encourages people to use the government's online facilities from the comfort of their own homes.

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