Planning and Implementing e-government Service Delivery: Achievements and Learnings from On-line Taxation in Greece

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1 Presented at the Workshop on e-government in the context of the 8th Panhellenic Conference on Informatics, Nicosia, Cyprus, November 8-10, 2001 Planning and Implementing e-government Service Delivery: Achievements and Learnings from On-line Taxation in Greece Dimitris Gouscos 1, Gregory Mentzas 2 and Panagiotis Georgiadis 1 1 General Secretariat for Information Systems, Greek Ministry of Finance GR-18346, Athens Greece 2 Information Management Unit, National Technical University of Athens GR-15780, Athens Greece Abstract. e-government comprises alignment of IT infrastructures, business processes and service content towards provision of high-quality and value-added e-services to citizens and businesses. Ubiquitous e-government services require relaxation of time, place and other accessibility constraints and compliance to architectural principles such as true-one-stop services and life-event orientation. Critical issues arise with respect to prioritization and pilot scoping of e-government services projects, exploitation of multi-device/multi-channel access technologies, re-engineering and security of backend IT infrastructures as well as evaluation of operational schemes. The e-services deployed by the Greek Ministry of Finance shall be used as an example. 1 The Concept of Electronic Government and Electronic Services Electronic Government should be considered as an integral system of political objectives organisational procedures information content ICT technologies operating within Public Administration so as to contribute to fulfillment of its mission. Electronic Government is not a mere technological infrastructure or strategy but rather a new integrated style of Public Administration organization and operations. Electronic Government addresses all citizens and businesses that Public Administration has a mission to serve, including those handicapped due to physical, social, economic, geographical or cultural factors. The strategic political objectives of Electronic Government include Social Cohesion (calling for Planning for All), Quality of Life and Business Competitiveness (calling for High Quality of Service) and Administrative Convergence (calling for Cost Efficiency). Electronic Government is founded upon internal electronic administration electronic collaboration with business partners (administration agencies, banking system, procurers etc), and electronic services for citizens and businesses. Electronic services are necessary for a variety of reasons of which the most important ones are that Public Administration plays a central role in modern economic and social relations bureaucratic complexity tends to increase in an entropic style citizen and business productive time is precious

2 the public demands higher quality of service. 2 A Normative Framework for Electronic Services Electronic services are offered by Government (G), including Public or Regional/Local Administration agencies to Businesses (B) and Citizens (C), in the form of G2G, G2B, G2C schemes. Additional cases (info- and service-mediaries) may also be considered. Electronic services should be characterized by (see e.g. [2], [4] and [7]): a. ubiquity offering any service to any citizen or business, in any place (workplace, domestic, public etc, any time (24x7 availability), through any communication channel (Internet, phone, fax etc), in any native language (national or non-national) and independently of IT skills (e.g. ability to type) b. uniqueness of reference single point of service for all cases, single sign-on for all services, single session for any service, transparent complexity, virtual integration c. de-materialisation no paper documents, no paper money, no physical transport, no physical waiting d. quality and cost effectiveness maximum reliability of results, maximum quality of service, minimum time of completion, minimum difficulty of access, minimum cost of use Electronic services can be offered at various levels of integration [3] such as a. convenience store approach provision of services in a broad spectrum of subjects, without (in the general case) particular relationshipsb. portal approach provision of entrance points to various services offered by other sites, with the capability for transparent transition to them c. first-stop approach provision of introductory information for various services, without capability of carrying on the interaction for completing transactionsd. true one-stop approach provision of information about services that correspond to end user life events, with the capability of completing transactions through transparent integration of internal processes. The content of electronic services can be categorized along the ICDT [1] model as follows : a. information services provision of non-personal information to any end user (e.g. phone directories, legal texts etc.) b. communication services (bi-directional) reception of and response to electronic messages (requests, complaints, notifications etc.)

3 c. distribution services access distribution, i.e. establishment of points of access to offered services in public places or through public infrastructures (e.g. public infokiosks with access to web sites, information services accessible through public phone numbers) and content distribution, i.e. provision of personal information to individuals (e.g. information on filed tax forms, VAT no checking, information on debts) d. transaction services provision of transaction procedures involving exchange of documents and/or money (e.g. filing of VAT forms, payment of taxes) 3 Guidelines for Planning Electronic Services Electronic services should be planned and deployed taking under consideration strategic objectives like the following : cater first and foremost for citizen and business needs (life events, business events), and support «e-citizens» and «e-businesses» facilitate access, cater for quality of results and minimize problems, errors and dissatisfaction exploit information content, add value to offered services, promote shift of culture towards quality and effectiveness and create prestige for public service Electronic services are essential business infrastructures and should only be planned and deployed as such. Critical methodological steps include a. identifying critical areas of service b. determining business priorities and critical success factors c. identifying business partners and building consensus d. determining the scope of a pilot application Pilot scoping of electronic services should follow a think big, start small approach, avoiding full-scale deployment and exhaustive-case implementation. Electronic service pilots can be deployed by a. identifying the base case on criteria such as usability, critical population of end users and implementability b. developing the main functionality c. satisfying basic non-functional requirements such as service availability, simplicity of use, security of service, infrastructures and content d. planning for roll-out according to principles of emphasis in communication with end users, compliance to publicly announced time schedule, reliability in functional and non-functional issues and maintenance of critical momentum e. establishing a use motivation policy by exploiting various awareness channels for prospective users (Internet, mass media, targeted events etc.) as well as various sorts of motives (not only economic) Functional design of electronic services should satisfy criteria such as the following : a. maximal access facilitation based on popular communication channels (e.g Internet, telephony) with minimal cost of access and use (possibly only communication costs) b. minimal access constraints based on geographic and social dispersion of access points, uninterrupted availability (24x7 planning, contingency planning), support for

4 non-nationals (at the levels of user interface, information content and user input forms), as well as support for IT-illiterate (e.g. through minimal typing and simple menus) c. remote service provision and delivery including remote registration to the service, receipt of credentials (e.g. username/password, digital signature), use of the service and delivery of results d. true one-stop integration comprising single point of access for all services, single sign-on scheme for all services, single session and process for every service, transparent complexity and virtual integration of the service scheme e. user friendliness based on design ergonomics, similarity of electronic forms to familiar printed ones, compilation of FAQ lists and answers and response scheme for exceptional cases. Technical design of electronic services can benefit from the following methodological guidelines : a. minimal re -engineering of internal IT infrastructures (e.g. develop just user interface over internal application for service S in order to e-enable it and provide e-s) b. maximal exploitation of internal IT infrastructures (e.g. re-use application code of service S for input validation checks performed by the user interface of e-s) c. no compromise to the security level of internal infrastructures (e.g. connect off-line to internal databases and information flows) d. satisfactory security level for e-services (proportionality principle : intensity of counter-measures should be proportional to the consequences of risks) e. exploit opportunities for server-side applications (so as to minimize necessary client-side infrastructures and investments for end-users) f. make message specifications available to third-parties (so as to allow for integration of COTS software with offered e-services) g. avoid technological preferentiality (e.g. allow access from any browser/os, any ISP etc) Technological platforms for electronic services can be selected according to criteria such as a. technological maturity (stability, performance, security) b. operational maturity (installed base industrial support, promotion as standard) c. total cost of ownership (incl. cost of procurement, training, tech. support as well as economic cost/benefit relationship) In light of the above criteria, technologies such as the following can be used for electronic service access, provision and delivery: a. provision through Internet (WWW, ) access and delivery devices : desktop, laptop, palmtop PCs, PDAs, infokiosks, ISDN cardphones, set-top boxes, interactive TV b. provision through Internet + gateways (WAP/SMS) access and delivery devices : mobile phones c. provision through call centers (human operators, IVR) access and delivery devices : fixed, mobile, public phones d. provision through fax servers access and delivery devices : fax machines, fax-enabled PCs

5 4 Some Indicators for Evaluating Electronic Services The operational performance of electronic services can be evaluated with different sorts of indicators such as the following (see also [6] and [8]): a. quality indicators (availability level, transaction completion time, error frequency, security level) b. attractiveness indicators (active user satisfaction, prospective user interest) c. user penetration indicators (active users as an absolute number and in relation to prospective, registration rate, de-registration rate) d. business penetration indicators (e-transactions as an absolute number and in relation to total) e. business performance indicators (economic cost based on TCO of e-service schemes, economic benefit based on reduction of operational costs, business benefit based on e.g. speed-up business transactions, contribution to business goals based on case-specific estimations) 5 A Business Case : The TAXIS Project and TAXISnet Electronic Services The General Secretariat for Information Systems (GSIS, of the Greek Ministry of Finance (GMoF) has deployed and currently operates the TAXIS (standing for Taxation Information System) IT infrastructure. TAXIS, a 6-year IT project initiated by GMOF after an IT master plan in 1995, represents one of GMOF s strategic IT investments with an overall budget of approx. 50 Meuros contributed by national and EU (ERDF/ESF) funds. TAXIS has provided IT support to the central tax authorities, located in Athens, as well as to local tax agencies, located all over Greece, for carrying out tax filing, calculation and payment transactions with citizens and businesses. Now in the final year of its deployment, TAXIS is based on a 3-tier data and application architecture over a private WAN to serve over 97% of tax payers and taxation transactions in Greece, with an objective of 100% within this year. TAXIS exploitation plans include the deployment of an MIS shell to support GMOF s policy-monitoring and policy-making requirements as well as the accessibility of TAXIS data pools to other GMOF and third-party information systems, so as to establish an overall architecture for intra- and inter-organisational information sharing which can form the basis of horizontal G2G co-operation schemes. Although the deployment of TAXIS has been complemented by a number of internal business process stream-lining and re-engineering initiatives aiming at better quality of service for citizens and businesses, it has become in the last years evident that the original conception of this project, dating back in 1995 when IT support for GMOF s internal business functions was urgently needed, suffers from a strong introvert orientation, failing to place emphasis on direct government-to-citizen and government-to-business service provision (see [5]). This fact, combined with the expansion of Internet and WWW as global communication and transaction infrastructures for an emerging, world-wide, digital economy, has led GSIS to the strategic conception of making some popular internal TAXIS services directly available to the citizen and business tax-payer communities, thus

6 providing the missing interface for extending an internal IT infrastructure for introvert functions to IT support for extrovert services. This conception has resulted in the TAXISnet project, whose services are directly accessible to the public in the form of a web site ( TAXISnet offers a webbased interface from which server-side applications perform transactions in order to provide user services. For security purposes, data retrievals for TAXISnet transactions are performed upon an off-line-maintained replica of involved TAXIS database tables, whereas data updates are replicated off-line to the TAXIS database. It should be noted that TAXISnet applications have been developed from re-usable TAXIS application components, whereas the aforementioned technical architecture requires a minimal amount of re-engineering in the original TAXIS applications and database schema. Therefore, the need for application software modifications or any other architectural adjustments has been minimized, thus also minimizing implementation time and costs. After a short initial, fully electronic, registration procedure, TAXISnet users receive electronic credentials which enable them to access the full range of TAXISnet services. Now in the second semester of its pilot phase, TAXISnet offers e-filing services for VAT (since May 2000) and income tax (since March 2001) forms, allowing the corresponding tax payments to be received via banking system infrastructures. Further services include e- issuing of tax certificates and e-provision of tax information. These services are available through the Internet at the GSIS and TAXISnet web sites ( and respectively) as well as through GSIS call centers and fax servers (TAXISphone service). In its current status, TAXISnet offers 24x7 service availability and real-time response for all transactions, plus on-line FAQs and -based help desk services for registered and prospective users. The main customer segments addressed by TAXISnet are (a) individual citizens, with emphasis on remote regions, (b) professional accountants and (c) private businesses, with emphasis on SMEs. No major cultural obstacles have discouraged TAXISnet end-users. As the current enduser penetration levels and rate testify, e-working habits as well as a trust-and-confidence culture have already been established by a sufficient number of citizens and businesses, who now act as a critical mass for maintaining the success momentum and attracting new users to the service. The main comparative advantages of TAXISnet, with respect to internal IT support for paper-based transactions, include (a) elimination of paper work and physical transport, (b) continuous service availability, reduced response time and a substantial decrease of errors, and (c) open API specifications for integration of TAXISnet service calls into third-party commercial software products (office automation packages, ERP systems etc.) A key issue in the deployment of TAXISnet services has been the minimization of additional technical know-how and economic investments required on behalf of end-users; since nearly all TAXISnet applications run server-side, only an Internet-enabled computer and a browser (most probably already available to end-users) are needed to access the full range of TAXISnet services. Furthermore, direct availability of TAXISnet services to all Internet users eliminates the need for additional distribution channels. Awareness on the service is promoted via the mass media, via regional and sectoral events as well as in co-operation with local Internet connectivity clusters (e.g. trade associations or university departments). Just as the case with

7 TAXIS, GSIS has outsourced the implementation of TAXISnet services to industrial IT solution providers, whereas service maintenance has been initiated on a co-sourcing basis. Some figures on user and business penetration of GSIS electronic services are as follows: a. e-vat service (May 2000 June 2001) filed forms 135,000 registered users 82,000 (10%) registration rate 300/day b. e-income Tax service (March 2001 May 2001) filed forms 23,000 registered users 130,000 (3%) registration rate 800/day c. e-certificates service (May 2000 May 2001) served requests 75,000 registered agencies 3,400 (34%) registration rate 300/mo nth d. e-income Tax Assessment Info (May 2000 December 2000) info requests 4,000,000 (40%) request rate 17,000/day e. e-awareness service (available through GSIS web site) hit rate 100,000/month registered users 2,500 registration rate 100/month The service for e-issuing of tax certificates has a target population of about 10,000 public administrations and banks asking their clients for such certificates, and now enabled to get them directly via TAXISnet. As far as the end-user registration percentages are concerned it should be noted that these refer to the total of VAT-liable (800,000) and Income Tax-liable (5,000,000) Greek taxpayers; if only Interned-enabled taxpayers are considered, and taking into account that nearly half of the tax payers use the intermediation services of Internet-enabled professional accountants, the corresponding registration percentages should be doubled (20% for e-vat and 6% for e-incometax). The operational cost and benefit of these e-services can be approached as follows : development costs amount to 600,000 euros yearly operational costs (telecommunication, personnel etc) amount to approx. 400,000 euros Without taking into account any increase in the current number of registered users, and considering the transactions that are expected during a 1-year period, the net gain in productive time that arises from the electronic implementation of these transactions amounts to about 3,600 person-months, which is equivalent to personnel cost reduction of about 3.6 Meuros (considering a minimum salary of 1,000 euros). From these figures it follows that there is a yearly net reduction in operational costs of about 3.2 Meuros, which far exceeds the size of the initial 600,000 euros investment. It should be noted, of course, that in anticipation of increases in the number of registered users, the operational cost gains are due to increase as well. Apart from that, it should also be noted that the usage of TAXISnet electronic services by citizens and businesses also results in significant compliance cost economies on their side. Again without considering any increase in the current numbers of registered users, the yearly

8 reduction of compliance costs amounts to more than 13,800 person-months, which is the equivalent of a yearly gain of at least 13.8 Meuro s worth productive time. 6 References 1. Anghern, A. (1997) Designing mature Internet business strategies: the ICDT model. European Management Journal, 15(4), August 1997, pp Breen, J. (2000) At the Dawn of e-government: The Citizen as Consumer, Government Finance Review, October 2000, pp COST Project (2000) Action A14 Government and Democracy in the Information Age Working Group ICT in Public Administration, One-Stop Government in Europe Results from 11 National Surveys, University of Bremen, 2000, 4. Dawes, S., P. Bloniarz, K. Kelly, and P. Fletcher (1999) Some Assembly Required: Building a Digital Government for the 21st Century, Report of a Multidisciplinary Workshop, Center for Technology in Government, March Gouscos, D., P. Georgiadis and T. Sagris (2000) From Introvert IT Systems to Extrovert e-services: e-government as an enabler for e-citizens and e-business A Framework of Principles. e-2000 Conference, Madrid, October Scheppach, R., and F. Shafroth, (2000) Governance in the New Economy, Report of the National Governors Association, Washington D.C., Sprecher, M. (2000) Racing to e-government: Using the Internet for Citizen Service Delivery, Government Finance Review, October 2000, pp West, D. (2000) Assessing E-government: The Internet, Democracy and Service Delivery by State and Federal Governments, Brown University, September 2000.