Background:
HMRC is a key delivery department for Government. It plays a vital role in helping to reduce the deficit through maximising the collection of taxes due in order to fund the UK's public services. We also help families and individuals with targeted financial support.
HMRC is a large and complex business. Its customers span nearly every UK citizen and business. In 2010-11 we collected over GBP 400 billion in tax and paid out over GBP 40 billion in benefits and credits.
HMRC's objectives are to maximise revenues, improve customer experience and reduce costs in a sustainable way. Our strategy is based on understanding our customers, so we can deliver services tailored to their needs and positively influence their behaviour. HMRC's digital strategy will help us meet our objectives. Our Digital Strategy (here) states (on page 14):
"The drive to Digital by Default will significantly reduce the volume of paper coming in to HMRC but, as dealing with HMRC by digital will not be mandatory for many of our customers, paper will never entirely disappear. An HMRC digitisation solution would take the vast majority of the remainder of paper mail being received within HMRC, open it in one place, scan it to capture a digital image of that paper, store that image in a digital library and move a copy of that image through a workflow solution. This service would be scaleable to the rest of HMRC, and would ensure that customers who are digitally excluded will not be also excluded from some of the benefits of digital (for example, there would be a significantly reduced risk of data loss, with paper no longer flowing from Regional Post Rooms, to back office post rooms, to teams, to storage).”
There remain large volumes of correspondence that are still received by paper from our customers. For pay as you earn, self assessment and national insurance contributions there are 15 millions pieces of correspondence per year and 1.2 million paper tax returns. HMRC's digital aspirations could dramatically reduce how much of this has to be dealt with in hard copy.
HMRC is undertaking a programme to transform how we deal with our customers via our paper channels, ensuring we reduce post handling costs, be more flexible to meet demand and see more cases resolved at first contact, therefore reducing rework. To support this HMRC wants to:
- create a digital copy of customer correspondence (including forms) ensuring we capture key information to identify who the customer is (such as a national insurance number or the self assessment unique tax payer reference) and what their correspondence is about (e.g. whether it is a form or a letter requesting a refund);
- securely store the digital copy of the customer correspondence in a digital library enabling our staff to retrieve a digital image of the correspondence; and
- create electronic workflow based on the type of digital correspondence so we can flexibly deploy work anywhere across our network of offices for processing.
HMRC is looking for potential suppliers to participate in a pre-procurement market engagement event.
What we are looking for:
Digital Mail Service
This service must initially be delivered to parts of the organisation that deal with an individual's tax affairs but following its successful implementation it will be delivered to the rest of the department.
This would include:
- Preparing post for scanning and exception handling (handing to HMRC the items not suitable for scanning).
- Scanning and image creation of paper forms, tax returns, associated supplementary pages and customer correspondence.
- Classifying each document based on what type of correspondence or tax return it is.
- Secure storage of scanned documents for a limited period before secure destruction.
- Electronic storage and document management of the digital image with the images being retrievable based on customer information.
- Electronic workflow of the digital image based on the document classifications required to work flow the item to the correct processing office.
HMRC encourages potential suppliers to propose innovative solutions as part of this market engagement.
HMRC is currently undertaking a proof of concept using in-house capabilities. Further detail will be supplied during the market engagement event.
Market and Supplier Engagement
HMRC will host a market engagement event on 2.5.2013 (location to be confirmed) to further develop its understanding of supplier capabilities and to gain advice from the market about the maturity of its requirement in readiness for a procurement exercise. The precise terms and timetable for the procurement exercise will be determined following the market engagement.
The market engagement event is an opportunity for suppliers to interact with the HMRC project team and our Subject Matter Experts. The event will consist of an initial briefing by the HMRC project team followed by a number of market stall-type sessions that will identify and explore themes relating to the challenges that the Digitisation of Inbound Customer Correspondence project is expected to encounter.
HMRC welcomes innovative proposals from suppliers and we wish to minimise any constraints to potential solutions. You may also wish to consider consortia or other collaborative means to bring together the best combination of suppliers including Small and Medium Enterprises.