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Wellington, July 23, 2022
New Zealand’s Inland Revenue Department (IRD) has launched a website making the detail behind its successfully completed $1.5 billion transformation programme available to other agencies and organisations.
The Business Transformation Programme (BT) was officially closed off in July 2022 and IRD’s Deputy Commissioner Greg James said that they have had many requests to share what has been learned in delivering it.
Largest in the Southern Hemisphere
“This was one of the largest and most ambitious programmes of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere. So, it is not surprising that others want to know what we did right, and what lessons we learned in doing it. All of the tools, plans, and templates we used for BT are on the site and can be downloaded,” he said.
Mr James said that each stage of BT is covered, including insights from projects which ran parallel with the programme such as intelligence and analytics, digital ecosystem, and organisational design.
“Inland Revenue’s transformation has been recognised as a success both in Aotearoa New Zealand and internationally, and this is an effective way we can ensure that new transformation programmes get the chance to benefit from our experience,” he said.
IRD’s Business Transformation Programme has made tax and payments simpler, more open and more certain for customers. Far more than just a technology upgrade, it has changed every aspect of the way we operate.
A rare opportunity
Mr James said, “Here is what we learned along the way. In November 2015, the government agreed to invest in Inland Revenue’s transformation, upgrading the systems we’d been using since the 1980s. The intent was to deliver a modern, digital revenue system that enabled customers to do as much for themselves as possible in a way and at a time that suited them. But this also provided the opportunity to fundamentally review how we administered the revenue system. This would involve a combination of changes to policy, process, technology, and people capabilities.”
