1. The Ministry’s overall
business context:
How the government’s and Ministry’s commitments and strategies,
as outlined in this Service Plan are supported by information
technology (IT) and management (IM). |
While the Ministry has no
direct New Era promises in its charge, it does have
responsibility to complete two major government-wide Strategic
Shifts — the Revenue/Receivables Management Project
(RRMP) and centralization of billing & receivables. These
two major shifts will require large investment in obtaining
and implementing sophisticated information technology and
information management. In addition, as a result of the reorganization
of government revenue programs into this Ministry, many of
the incoming systems supporting transitioned programs require
various levels of investment to maintain functionality. |
| 2. The Information Management
direction of the Ministry. (i.e. freedom of information,
protection of privacy, records management & data sharing) |
The Ministry follows records
management principals and procedures for management of paper
records. The Ministry also uses imaging technology to store
and retrieve taxpayer filings, payment records and correspondence
electronically. The Ministry follows government standards
and procedures with respect to freedom of information and
protection of privacy. All taxpayer information gathered is
considered confidential and access to this data is restricted
against unauthorised purposes and use. |
| 3. The Ministry’s plans for
its legacy systems (10 years or older) |
Two of the six major legacy
applications, the Loan Administration System and the Forest
Revenue Branch Systems, are mainframe IBM VM based. Interim
strategies are being investigated to minimize operational
cost increases when Ministry of Forests comes off VM in September,
2003. The long term vision is to incorporate these applications
as part of the RRMP. Two others, the Real Property Tax System
and the Property Transfer Tax System are candidates for leveraging
existing systems and a strategy is being developed for implementation.
The remaining two, the Revenue Income Taxation Branch System
and the Royalty Management System, are status quo, stable,
working and too cost-prohibitive to replace. |
| 4. The Ministry’s major
IM/IT projects. |
The primary initiative is
the RRMP which is intended to implement an integrated, streamlined
business and systems environment that enables consolidation
of government-wide revenue management under this Ministry.
Other significant project work includes upgrade of our major
consumption tax support system and related systems; implementation
of the Ministry’s Electronic Service Delivery strategic plan;
re-design of billing & receivable to support systems;
and Enterprise Architecture development and implementation. |
| 5. The identification of
any opportunities for sharing systems and/or information
across ministries, the broader BC public sector, or other
jurisdictions and private partnerships. |
The Ministry consistently
looks to leverage all of our infrastructure architecture,
modern applications, reliable technologies and purposeful
business knowledge across all business units within the newly
consolidated Ministry. The Ministry makes additional efforts
to share its IM/IT advances with other ministries and government
(i.e., performance measurement activity). The Ministry bi-laterally
shares taxpayer personal and corporate information with other
ministries, provincial agencies, the federal government, private
collection agencies and credit rating agencies. |
| 6. The Ministry’s commitment
to Electronic Service Delivery (ESD). |
The Ministry is redesigning
its strategic objectives for ESD which will be complete for
implementation phase by June 2003. Implementation of e-services
will occur mainly during the following two fiscal years. Meanwhile,
the Ministry program areas are working on a number of independent
projects with Provincial Treasury that will provide some capability
for the public to make electronic payments on overdue loans
or other outstanding debts via PC / telephone banking. The
Ministry is re-designing the front-end of the Property Transfer
Tax application to develop the capacity to receive and administer
electronic tax returns from the Electronic Filing System project
at the Land Titles Branch. We also plan to extend PC / telephone
banking, accept electronic payments in more areas and electronic
tax notices for real property rural taxpayers. |
| 7. IM/IT Summary of capital
asset requests for the next 3 years. |
| |
2003-2004 |
2004-2005 |
2005-2006 |
| Systems |
$ 9,135,000 |
$ 11,070,000 |
$ 12,736,000 |
| Special Projects Office |
9,000,000 |
9,000,000 |
7,000,000 |
| Total |
$18,135,000 |
$20,070,000 |
$19,736,000 |
|
