4. In which ways is the initiative creative and innovative?
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For the project implementation from the information systems point of view, the waterfall method was used, initially providing documentation development and then software development. SRS made an agreement with the software developer, within which the necessary information system development tasks were ordered. SRS initially provided the required business requirements for the service, after that making a memorandum of agreement on the performance of the necessary tasks. The project implementation was done by initially developing the software documentation, ensuring software documentation reviewing from the SRS side. After accepting the software documentation, the software development, testing and delivering for acceptance testing to SRS was carried out. SRS installed the software in a test environment and carried out testing in accordance with the software documentation. After successful software acceptance testing all the necessary steps were taken for the software installation in the production environment providing and opportunity to take steps back in case of errors. Before the implementation of the solution and after the installation of the software in the production environment, the service promotion was provided via mass media. All activities and responsibilities are clearly defined in the attached activities plan.
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5. Who implemented the initiative and what is the size of the population affected by this initiative?
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In October 2012, the Ministry of Finance made a proposal to change the notification procedure of the administrative acts, decisions, etc. issued by SRS while transitioning to an electronic environment. The proposal was discussed in the Latvian Parliament. In December 13, 2012, the proposal was approved as amendments to the law ”On Taxes and Fees”.
The political decision implementation was provided accordingly to the Public Procurement Law by Latvian Republic: the State Revenue Service has entered into the contract for information systems development, maintenance, and supervision, which was undertaken as part of the service development.
The State Revenue Service participated in the project implementation as business process owners and IT specialists. SRS representatives provided development of the project business requirements description from the business process point of view, taking into account the technological tools that were at the disposal of SRS and testing after the delivery of the solution. The roles of the involved SRS personnel were as follows: business process owners, IT administrators, IT project managers, testers. Exigen Services Latvia provided the project development – software requirements specification development, software requirements description development and software development.
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6. How was the strategy implemented and what resources were mobilized?
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The project was financed by the Latvian state budget. In SRS, various contributions to the project are provided by its personnel, who usually performs specific SRS functions (provide tax administration, take responsibility for development of legislative acts, etc.). A separate project team with the single goal to implement the project was not appointed.
The project implementation costs were as follows:
1. The IT solution (software development) – 67,542 euros
Licences and equipment – two Oracle Enterprise Licences: 105,156 EUR, technical equipment: 12,567 EUR
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7. Who were the stakeholders involved in the design of the initiative and in its implementation?
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1. Provided online communication between SRS and EDS users.
Target audience of the new e-service NMAS are the EDS users and registered taxpayers – all legal entities (more than 186,000) and almost 400,000 individuals, as well as any individual who is not registered as an EDS client, but by using the access via the portal latvija.lv that requires bank authentification and authorization can access also the EDS and NMAS services.
Since the implementation of the solution, SRS has sent documents to taxpayers 1,331,588 times, while taxpayers have sent documents to SRS 181,118 times. The number of EDS users is increasing by every year, hence, the number us NMAS service users is also increasing.
2. Administrative, time and financial resources saved.
Since NMAS solution was implemented, the current financial effect has reached the saving of nearly 3 millions EUR within past 17 months including:
• Saving for tax payers 1,434,682 EUR ( incl. public transport expenses 2.40 euro, purchase of an envelope and a postage stamp for the Latvia territory around 1 euro, the price of a paper printout around 0.20 euro, 181 118 correspondence units).
• Saving for SRS thus reached 1,597,905 euros (purchase of an envelope and a postage stamp for the Latvia territory around 1 euro, the price of a paper printout around 0.20 euro, 1 331 588 corrrespondence units).
3. Instant communication without delays that would be caused by transportation of documents using a computer and an Internet connection.
4. Convenient and direct access to the communication channel, which also provides a communication feedback.
5. Improved quality of services to taxpayers and the public image of SRS.
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8. What were the most successful outputs and why was the initiative effective?
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The system logs the nature and volume of all communication that goes through it. The cost of communicating without the system was known. This allowed for a comparison to be made between the data on enacting the process without and with usage of the system. From that comparison an evaluation of the project benefits in terms of time and financial resources was produced.
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9. What were the main obstacles encountered and how were they overcome?
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• Limited resources of personnel for project execution:
- The personnel of the SRS carried out their part of the project implementation as an additional activity to their daily work.
• Since this specific e-service is one of the first of that kind in the Latvian public administration there were no direct previous experience that could be applied to the implementation of this project:
- Political support, timely informing of the public and gradual project implementation enabled successful realization of the new changes.
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