“Money, money, money, Must be funny, In the rich man’s world.” Well, you probably now wonder how the Abba song relates to the Dutch government and failing with its IT. This has to do with the main subject for this article: the Dutch Tax Authority. Especially the information technology systems at the Dutch Tax Authority are falling behind. How does this come about? And why does it seem that the Dutch government can’t get any form of grip on its IT?
Lack of Expertise
The Netherlands Court of Audit (NCA) released an article in 2019, stating that the Dutch Government fails to get control on its IT-systems (Algemene Rekenkamer, 2019). They mention that around 25% of all IT-investments on the public IT, is to do with “renovating” and upgrading the IT-systems. This seems like a fair amount, but the other 75% is basically out of sight. With this in mind, it is interesting to note that more than half of all the IT-systems at the Tax Authority are outdated (Tweakers, 2019).
One of those systems which needs an update, is the system for taxing incomes. Back in 1982, the authority introduced this system. It must be known that this system runs without any big outages, which is a good thing, but it is impossible to change any tax classes due to the legacy software. Moreover, the system is rather implemented with other IT systems, which makes it even more difficult to change the software. To actually change this software, the authority needs expertise in its employees. However, the NCA stated that the Tax Authority is short of these employees. Therefore, it will take even longer to upgrade the system from the legacy code base.
What the Legacy?!
I think it’s interesting to see that in a lot of articles I found on this matter, terms such as “old” and “outdated” systems appear. I already dropped the word before, but in IT we call this legacy systems. ForumOne (2021) wrote an interesting blog on modernizing government legacy systems. They mention that legacy systems are problematic if:
- It cannot integrate with new systems
- It doesn’t meet modern security requirements
- Data is becoming increasingly siloed
- Maintenance is costly and in some cases wasteful
- Compliance with regulations (such as GDPR) is becoming increasingly more difficult
To renew information technology systems, ForumOne mentions an interesting plan of steps to just get started. Some of the interesting steps I will now elaborate on. At first, it is important to have an idea of what the legacy system is capable of and where the bottlenecks are. Then, it’s extremely important to know what you are going to change. Therefore, a Change Management plan is very crucial. The third step mentioned is that you should not wish to replace the whole legacy at once. The Tax Authority should start small and increase step by step, by working Agile.
And now?
If I think back of the news that has been published in the last few years, I feel like the Dutch government doesn’t feel the urge to really get this working. Especially the fact that there is no dedicated ministry for defining and executing a Digital or IT strategy, is something that I don’t understand. In my opinion, this ministry should be responsible for taking control back on the finance. Especially getting an overview of all the costs, not only for the governmental machinery, but also for the municipalities. I’m curious to see if the next cabinet will introduce a dedicated ministry of Information Technology, to get the full control back.
Algemene Rekenkamer. (2019, May 14). Rijksoverheid heeft informatiebeveiliging en IT beheer nog niet op orde. Nieuwsbericht | Algemene Rekenkamer. Retrieved 6 October 2022, from https://www.rekenkamer.nl/actueel/nieuws/2019/05/15/rijksoverheid-heeft-informatiebeveiliging-en-it-beheer-nog-niet-op-orde
Modernizing Government Legacy Systems. (2022, March 17). Forum One. Retrieved 6 October 2022, from https://www.forumone.com/insights/blog/modernizing-government-legacy-systems/
Jansen, J. (2019, May 15). ‘Meer dan de helft van ict-systemen van de Belastingdienst is verouderd’. Tweakers. Retrieved 6 October 2022, from https://tweakers.net/nieuws/152820/meer-dan-de-helft-van-ict-systemen-van-de-belastingdienst-is-verouderd.html
Jansen, J. (2019a, April 15). Minister stopt ontwikkeling ict-systeem voor NVWA wegens kostenoverschrijdingen. Tweakers. Retrieved 6 October 2022, from https://tweakers.net/nieuws/151588/minister-stopt-ontwikkeling-ict-systeem-voor-nvwa-wegens-kostenoverschrijdingen.html
Header image from: https://www.computable.nl/artikel/blogs/overheid/7335309/5260614/hoe-grote-it-projecten-bij-overheid-falen.html
