CRA and SSC – Making collaboration less taxing

The Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) held an event for the end of a successful T1 tax filing season, and asked Shared Services Canada (SSC) to come along to celebrate.

This year’s tax filing season made history, numbers wise. This year, over 24 million Canadians filed their taxes online. That’s more than ever before. CRA and SSC have been working hard behind the scene to perfect the architecture of the applications they use and beef up the IT infrastructure that drives it all in order to make sure that when it comes to filling time, everything just works.

CRA Commissioner Bob Hamilton, Assistant Commissioner and Chief Information Officer Annette Butikofer, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Gillian Pranke, and SSC Senior Assistant Deputy Minister Greg McKay spoke at the event and praised the work of the many public servants who contributed to making this year’s T1 Tax Filing period a success.

The combination of sensitive data, a firm deadline for Canadians to file, and big shift to online filing in recent years made ramping up CRA capacity a huge priority. In order to coordinate multiple projects and keep track of all the moving pieces, SSC’s Yana Hof, then CRA Service Delivery Manager, helped CRA put in place a program of work. This strategy can help partners and SSC by:

  • defining and setting priorities for IT Plans,
  • increasing consultation between departments,
  • identifying and implementing solutions to address any capacity requirements and gaps, and;
  • improving and aligning process between Service lines and Business Requirement Documents to promote effective and efficient delivery of services.

Having a program of work in place created a path forward for the departments and coordinated their efforts, allowing staff on both sides keep the work flowing and overcome obstacles as they arose.

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