Inland Revenue - Bidding
on Success
When the Inland Revenue embarked on the largest ever government
outsourcing contract, it had to ensure that the bidders were
put through their business and technology paces like never
before.
The Inland Revenue has a large and diverse
customer base and its responsibilities have expanded dramatically
over recent years. As Peter Richardson, head of infrastructure
at the Inland Revenue, explains: “The Inland Revenue
is facing an unparalleled amount of change – in terms
of policy, compliance, new technology and customer expectations.
Today’s customers want public services that meet their
needs, and are accessible when and where they want them.”
Technology is central to this modernisation, especially as
the Inland Revenue is now making increasing use of the Internet
to deliver its services, so the organisation’s IT partner
plays a key role. When the Inland Revenue’s existing
IT outsourcing contract came up for renewal, it decided to
take an innovative approach to selecting a new technology partner.
As John Yard, director of Inland Revenue Business Services,
at the Inland Revenue, explains: “The normal pattern
is for us to produce an invitation to tender document, which
generates a massive paper response from the bidders. We wanted
to make the exercise of evaluating the bidders more real both
for them and us.” To do this, the Inland Revenue opted
to run an innovative design and implementation study.
These studies were designed to fulfil a number of objectives,
as Yard explains: “As well as breathing some life into
the paper-based IT tender process, the studies were designed
to provide us with practical experience of working with the
bidding teams, and to enable us to do some real work while
selecting a new technology partner.” As a result, the
Inland Revenue decided to set the three shortlisted bidding
teams a real-life challenge, which involved creating a new
tax application for a specific group of people.
The Inland Revenue, however,
faced its own challenge – providing the teams with
the technology and development environment they would require
to complete the study. Each of the bidders needed access
to an IT infrastructure that replicated the Inland Revenue’s
existing environment, and which could be used for testing
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