The South African Revenue Service (SARS) will increase its ICT spend by 2% in the 2021/22 fiscal year, revealed commissioner Edward Kieswetter.
ICT spend at SARS is currently about 8% of the taxman’s budget, said Kieswetter, who was briefing Parliament’s Standing Committee on Finance on the revenue service’s annual performance plan (APP).
Kieswetter did not outline the increase in rand-value terms.
ITWeb requested SARS to provide more details of how much it spent on ICT in the previous financial year and the total amount the planned 2% increase will equate to.
The revenue service responded by saying: “SARS’s figure for ICT spend in the 2020/21 financial year is yet to be audited and so the figures cannot be released at this point.
“The final number will serve as the basis upon which the approximately 2% increase – based on current spend – will be calculated in the 2021/22 financial year.”
The organisation’s ICT infrastructure became the subject of much debate in recent years, which resulted in the new leadership outlining a vision for a “re-imagined SARS of the future”, emphasising the need to boost the technological capacityderiving insights from data.
The revenue authority’s IT systems came under the spotlight again earlier this year, when it failed to timeously migrate all its forms from defunct software platform, Adobe Flash Player, to its chosen HTML5 technology.
In the APP document presented in Parliament, SARS notes it has been “underinvesting in information and communications technology (ICT), and compared to other jurisdictions with similar enablement aspirations, it is estimated SARS invests about 50% of what it should”.
It continues: “The medium-term ENE [estimates of national expenditure] view does not include additional requirements relating to capacity/skills rebuilding, ICT and projects because SARS is not allowed to budget for deficit by the public Finance Management Act and further emphasised in the ENE guidelines.
“SARS is reconfiguring its cost structure within the constrained allocation to ensure ICT infrastructure is as optimally positioned as possible to enable SARS’s mandate and align with its international peers. Spending is shifted from low value-adding activities – that is real estate and related costs as well as administrative expenses – to high value-adding activities (ICT and related costs).”
Data goldmine
Kieswetter pointed to data being an important piece of enabling work for SARS, labelling it as the “new gold”. He also noted the tax collecting agency’s search for a chief data scientist.
Last month, SARS announcedit was on a recruitment drive to attract highly-skilled and experienced individuals in areas such as IT, data management, legal specialist services, and audit and risk, to name a few.
Foremost among the IT roles SARS wants to fill is that of chief data scientist, chief technology and innovation officer, as well as specialists and senior specialists in data analytics and data science.
The commissioner explained that the quest for a chief data scientist is to turn data science into a formal discipline. “At the moment, our skills are largely home-grown but there are international best practices that we can aspire to; hence bringing a data scientist into SARS is important to improve our overall use of data, as well as improving the environment within which we manage data.
“Super-imposed on this are things like POPI [Protection of Personal Information Act] because we need to increasingly provide data security in terms of VAT legislation but also in terms of our own requirement to observe confidentiality.”
In the APP document, SARS states: “By expanding and increasing the use of data, data analytics and artificial intelligence, we create the capability to understand the compliance behaviour of taxpayers and traders to provide clarity and certainty where it is needed, and a simple, easy and seamless service that fosters voluntary compliance.
“We have incorporated data into a comprehensive system of knowledge management. The composite effect of the expanded and increased use of data must substantively support our strategic intent of voluntary compliance.”
On recruiting a chief innovation officer, Kieswetter said it is to refine SARS’s strategic journey of the use of information and technology going forward.
“This is important because as our tax base grows, we need to ensure that more and more of our offerings are presented to taxpayers online. This is to make sure those who do come to our branches and ask for help reduce in numbers, so that we can give them the time they require.”
Modernised outlook
Kieswetter told the committee the SARS vision is not just a collection of words, but is very deliberate.
“It speaks to the fact that we cannot simply restore SARS to its ‘former glory’ because if we did that, we would be going backwards. We have to envision a SARS which is future-proofed, modern and relevant. The ‘smart modern’ is the complex interplay between people, technology and data.”
In terms of the interplay between people, technology and data, he explained it is not technology replacing people, but technology and data augmenting the work that people do, and improving the way SARS profiles risk, selects cases, assesses outcomes and the integrity. “Technology enhances the engagement model or the interface between SARS and its public.”
He concluded: “If we do the work and are successful in achieving our strategic intent and if we execute the programmes with excellence and efficiency, we are confident we will have rebuilt our capability.
“We will have made substantial progress over the next three years towards being a smart modern SARS that can be trusted and admired.”
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