West Australian State Revenue Department

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WA Revenue turns to Fujitsu for integrated systems

Western Australia leads the way in revenue collection applications. The West Australian State Revenue Department's Revenue Collection Information System (RCIS) is widely regarded as the most advanced system of its type and has been licensed to the State Revenue offices in NSW, Victoria and Queensland.

It is the result of a long term commitment by the Department, which back in 1991-92 recognised the frailty of operating three major separate systems and set out to convince successive governments of the need for an integrated system.

The major taxes collected by the Department are stamp duties, payroll and land tax - all of which were managed on separate systems in different buildings. In addition, the Department administers the Indian Ocean Territories which include the Cocos and Christmas islands. Fall-out from a High Court decision on external taxes such as liquor, tobacco and petroleum meant the Department had to build a system flexible enough to cater for these collections as well.

The search for a new system got the green light - and a proviso that it had to be achieved with minimum disruption to the collection of revenues of approximately $A2.2 billion each year.

Since 1995, Fujitsu has worked in partnership with the WA State Revenue Office to design and build a fully integrated $20 million system that delivers significant benefits to staff, government and the broader community.

As the prime contractor for the project, Fujitsu provided overall project management of the consortium together with management of the software development teams. State Revenue, Computer Power and Fujitsu were integrated into a technical project team of 45 people for the project.

The system was designed to allow for flexibility in the organisational structure and can incorporate new taxes and new IT concepts. The stamp duty application is the most complicated and consists of core systems for assessing and payments, revenue control, workflow, account management, document management, and security and debt recovery.

The RCIS application was designed and developed using Oracle development and database products and uses Fujitsu's TeamWare range of groupware products - TeamMail and TeamCalender - as well as a suite of Microsoft Office products and a knowledge-based text system.

The system gives the Department the workflow tools it needs to distribute changes quickly. With the knowledge repository it has built, officers have well structured information at their finger tips for enhanced decision-making.

The flexibility of the new system provides huge savings and increases the scope of work for staff so employees can develop their careers. The majority of staff now work in self-directed work teams.

Other benefits of RCIS include the ability to work out the cost of collection by modelling and verifying if the system meets the objectives for multi-skilling and multi-tasking. Employees can now move between the different areas without having to undergo additional training.