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