The French tax return period for 2006 is rapidly approaching. In 2005, 3.7m taxpayers filed returns online, against a target of 1.5m filings, and up from 1.3m in 2004. The initiative was a major success in terms of adoption. However, there were several technical glitches - the system went offline several times during the tax declaration period as the system was a victim of its own success.
The government has released an audit report on its e-tax initiative, with the following key points:
- the system suffers from technical constraints, and officials are unsure whether it will be able to meet the target of 10m tax filings for 2006
- the initial implementation of Copernic, a system that aims to unify the different independent applications used by different agencies and authorities, is entering a more complex phase both in terms of technology and change management. Copernic had an initial budget of €911m during 2001-2009. However, this budget only covers the development and rollout of the system, and one year of maintenance
- Copernic is only used provide authentication, electronic signatures, databases and a few generic portal elements to the main e-tax system - Adonis
- there are two versions of Adonis: V1 and V2. V1, which is currently used, should have been replaced in 2005 by V2, which offers more functionality and can accommodate a greater number of tax filings. However, in December 2005 V2 had yet to be rolled out
- the €20 discount that is used as an incentive for taxpayers to file online will have a total cost of €108m, which is greater than the €35m expected savings per year!
On the positive side, the French government is clearly moving towards transparency with its e-government initiative. It wouldn't have released an audit report like this into the public domain a few years ago. All major transformational initiatives are difficult and risky, so we would have been surprised if everything had gone smoothly in terms of technology.
More intriguing is the fact that each online tax filing only seems to bring a saving of €3.5. The committee responsible for the audit has admitted that there is plenty of work to be done on the ROI of these projects. We can't wait to read its report.
Autor: Dominique Raviart
Quelle: Ovum, 18.04.2066
