Steve Lamey gave the opening presentation at the Government UK IT Summit yesterday.  He had a twenty minute slot and several times that amount of material, so reading his powerpoint was rather like trying to recognise faces in a passing express train.  So here are some pretty random fragments:

  • HMRC sends out 160 million letters a year.  Only 65% get through (though from something he said later, I think he might mean that 35% get returned undelivered, which is not the same thing).  Those numbers have taken three months to discover.
  • It receives 48 million inbound calls, which sounds reasonably precise, but was then qualified as the central estimate of a range falling between 30 and 60 million.
  • Of the 30 million self-assessment returns received each year, 13 million have to be re-processed.
  • They are probably missing £30-50 billion a year in revenue not collected
  • His mission statement for Information Management Services  – their PSD-equivalent – is

Enable improved business processes

which is rather pithier than ours, but also reflects Lamey’s responsibility for the process improvement of PAYE and SA.

  • Steve described five principles:
    • [Automated] work process
    • Turning data into knowledge
    • Capturing data at source
    • Real time decision making
    • Standardised and commoditised

(the square brackets round the first verb are because the speed of delivery was such that I am struggling to decipher my notes – neither ‘anecdotal’ nor ‘ante-natal’ seem quite right in the context)

  • He put a lot of stress on finding the ‘killer KPIs’ – the ones which shine unexpected light on performance.  Example:  data entry for SA returns runs at 11 per person per day – as opposed to the 30 to 40 Steve thinks it should be
  • Purpose of the IT function (to go with the  mission statement above):
    • Deliver high quality services
    • Strategic IT planning
    • Stimulate business improvement