Background information
New York State department of Taxation and Finance is a great/principle government agency of the New York that is held account to several activities including, the administration, evaluation and handling of all Tax forms and Tax publications processed within the state, administration and enforcing of the Tax Laws of New York.
It is responsible to disseminating tax revenues to county governments and other state corporations. NYSDTF works under laws and rules (established by New York’s public officer of Law) which it must adhere to.
New York State Department of Taxation and Finance has workers employed to work for the agency. It’s estimated that this government private agency employs an approximate average staff figure of 50-99 employees.
These workers however, must also correctly and legally file their individual taxes else they would be subjected to termination. The agency has tax formalities for the residents which is quite different from that of the non residents.
Problem statement
New York State Department of Taxation and Finance made a great step to improve the services it provides to the United States residents and non residents by going online. It is evident that the tax payers can access tax forms of any category online print them out then upload filled up forms back to the NYSDTF agency.
Immense paperwork involved in the data processing and the great numbers the agency serves at a time has caused several challenges to the NYSDTF. For instance service delivery to its clients has increasingly become slow, tedious and ineffective. Cases of inaccurate data entered by the data entry clerks into this system and transmitted have also been reported in several instances.
Mob cases of data loss and incorrect data have been reported too at the company. It’s therefore recommended that NYSDTF adopts and implements a computerized system that captures and keeps track of its client’s data, further still the system should allow the clients to input data direct to the database. This will reduce on the faults of incorrect and inaccurate data.
The manual way of inputting data into the system from the forms filled by their clients has raised eyebrows (data redundancy and late information deliveries) and action therefore needs to be taken. Also, manual systems are heavily dependent on the human ability in many things among them personnel efficiency and the ability to memorize things.
This makes the system vulnerable to cases of sabotage and also incompetence handling of data. The ability of human beings to put in memory data of such magnitude is hard and unrealistic to a greater extent.
Since people have to pay their taxes as per the rules and regulations of the state, they are bound rather forced to incur unnecessary costs in seeking alternative sources that provide the same services offered by the agency whenever such faults occur.
Measurement tools
By use of written questionnaires, a research was carried out as it will be shown below. The questionnaires were evenly distributed among the staff of NYSDTF and some given out to their clients. Of the 2600 questionnaires given out only 2000 were returned for analysis.
Findings on the analysis carried out basing on this research tools and show a great need for NYSDTF to adopt some improved functionalities of the same system to enable them serve their customers effectively and efficiently. This system would reduce on the data processing time for one; the client would be entering his/her own data direct to the agency’s database.
Written questionnaires are a good tool for collecting information especially when you are getting information from a scattered population.
They are familiar with most people. At least they are well known and require no or minimal introduction when collecting information. They mostly come in three parts the first one being the introduction bit that is meant to welcome the interviewee and soften the environment for question answering.
This is a very important part in any questionnaire because it is a determinant factor to getting important and vital information required for your research.
The second part is the body that contains the questions and can be called it the body of our questionnaire. The last part is meant to appreciate the efforts taken by the respondent in answering the questions given.
Compared to interviews the responses gathered when using questionnaires are more of standard and objective in the sense of being straight and to the point. They give the respondents an opportunity to express themselves and especially for the written questionnaires.
They reach a large population and within a very short time. It’s just a matter of distributing the questionnaires to the people and later collecting them for evaluation and analysis purposes.
This research method has challenges too for instance not all questionnaires are returned by the respondents, at time the respondents fail to answer all questions asked and more so when the questionnaire is too long they get bored and tired along the way. They are only relevant for the learned population; only people who can read and write.
The open ended questionnaires mostly generate large amounts of data that in the long run take time to process and evaluate though we could limit this by limiting the amount of space left for particular questions.
Below is a sample questionnaire questions used in our the research
A Research Carried Out At New York State Department Of Taxation And Finance
Please note that the information you give will be handled as confidential we therefore urge you to give information to the best of your ability.
- When was New York State department of Taxation and Finance established?
- Who coordinates all data and information activities in the agency?
- What are the procedures to data processing rather how do you operate to serve a single client right from his/her registration phase?
- How many clients do you serve in a day and in a year?
- How do you capture and store information about your clients?
- Which areas do you serve?
- What challenges do you face in your day to day activities?
Apart from use of questionnaires, I plan to carry out a pilot test with some customers and have them comment on the same. This will however be done after the new system has been created. This is a tricky point as the agency insists on giving their best in terms of service delivery.
Thus, it cannot allow systems that it is not sure of their performance to be incorporated in their operations. To deal with this, I shall use old data from the consumers. This shall not at any point interfere with the daily running of activities.
Analysis of data
Data analysis process involves thorough inspection, data cleaning (sorting out data and placing it in the right order and in the right place at the right time), transformation (in the sense of picking out facts) and modeling data with an aim of picking out useful information and making conclusions from a massive search carried out.
As clearly outlined above, data analysis process comes in stages the first one being that of data cleaning which can still be done during data entry. Erroneous data is either removed or corrected.
Initial data analysis comes in the second phase and should not be confused with the main data analysis phase. In this step or phase, one gets some guidance to answering the main research questions and totally refrains from answering the main research question(s).
The quality of measurement is also done at this step where the information reported is compared to the actual data collected. This is an important and vital step and should not be left out otherwise the analysis would be done on analysis.
Challenges
One of the greatest challenges faced by New York State Department of Taxation and Finance on its online provided services is the complexity of the system. The system is a bit complicated and for an ordinary client wishing to use service might not be able to access what she/he wants.
It faces a big challenge of finding ways to cutting the long queues made by the clients especially when making follow ups, inquiries and when making payments without pulling the services away from there clients(ways to totally eliminate paperwork in the agency). It is faced with the challenge of storing this huge amount of data in a systematic, accurate and consistent order.
The quality of data is then checked to find out if the data collected portrays a state of the actual situation or the situation on ground, to find out the consistency of the data collected also to find out if this data collected is accurate on facts (Kirk, 2009). To also find out the Completeness, timeliness, accuracy and above all the validity of data collected.
Another challenge that New York State Department of Taxation and Finance faces is the inconsistence of the customers. Though the customers that are served by the Agency can be broadly categorized as is done in other sections of this paper, the Agency has inconsistent customers.
Being an international destination, a number of taxpayers enroll for a short duration and then leave the state. This category of customers increases the number of files that the Agency has to deal with.
After an accurate evaluation and analysis of data collected, I am planning to develop and put into use an information system for New York Stated Department of Taxation and Finance.
A system that will help the agency automatically generate invoices and forward them to the clients email addresses as soon as possible, help the company calculate and send bills to its clients either via mails or to their mobile phones as a new functionality added into their system.
Also develop a simple online system that will help the organization advertise it’s self on the internet efficiently. The current agency’s website is a bit complicated which makes is hard to for one to find correct information -the exact thing one could be looking for.
Information technologies help one to expand his/her business and increase individual productivity. These systems are good and allow input and output monitoring that in the long run can be used to monitor productivity across all departments in the organization.
In turn this helps one even terminate employees that are not serous at doing their duties at the same time keep those that are performing at individual level (Evans and Lindsay, 1998).
That allows members to transfer money from their mobile phone’s account to the company’s bank account without necessarily having to travel all the way to the agency (Segalstad, 2008). This step however shall be dependent of the existing laws.
Transfer of money through mobile phones in a technology that is yet to be legally enacted in many states. The Agency can attain this by joining hands with other organizations in the state to push the relevant authorities to pass such a law.
Implementation
One of the mandatory steps that are required of the company is to have an upgrade in its human resource. This has to be done in different phases. As noted previously in this paper, a vast majority of the current human personnel in NYSDTF have little competency in computer software development.
The implementation of the information technology systems will thus require that the staff be educated on how to develop the system especially for them to be able to include the electronic filing facility into their system instead of them hiring vendors from outside. This will require continuous classes that will be conducted by persons who are conversant with the system development be introduced.
Though NYSDTF has an option and an ability to hire or bringing in staff that is literate in this sector, the move is not advisable since it might take them another decade to make them fully understand how it does its activities.
The system transition requires persons who are conversant with the old systems for easy transition. The education on staff needs to be a continuous process. After the induction, the staff needed to be educated on the updates and developments in the fields of information technology as time requires (Evan and Lindsay, 1998).
In addition to education of staff, NYSDTF also requires to bring in experienced system developers who shall see the implementation of the systems. The specialized personnel shall also be required to keep the systems updated with the developments in the information technology.
This is to ensure that; one, the company keeps in line with the developments, two, the NYSDTF systems are not internally or externally tampered with, and three, that the other staffs are properly using the systems (Kirk, 2009).
Apart from the change in education and in personnel, the implementation will require a work plan. A direct implementation will require that the company first halts its service delivery and concentrate on the implementation – this is not advisable due to the importance of the services offered by the company.
Considering this, the company should change the systems in phases (Baschab, Piot, 2007). The following work plan is preferred;
First, NYSDTF needs to have computerized top management. This implies that, all the top managers should have all their files in the new systems and introduce the electronic filing to its new members first. It should also ensure or organize training sessions for the old clients
The second department in the work plan is the accounting department. This shall update its files and records starting with the most recent working backwards. This will ensure that customers requiring services during the implementation period shall receive using new systems (Kirk, 2009).
Next is uploading of the old files and records of the field managers. At this stage, the physical files of the various locations previously mentioned shall be transferred into computer files.
After all theses records have been updated, the implementation team shall need to create a database that shall be used to store periodical data. The database will be automatically updated once there are records updates in the field manager’s files and other departmental files. It is at this stage that the pilot test shall be run.
The agency shall identify some clients who shall input their past data into the new system. The Agency staff shall guide the clients on the way to carry out this exercise. After this, the client shall be required to comment on the new system.
After the changes have been included in the database, the implementation team shall be required to introduce and educate people on how to use the new functionality in their website. The agency shall advertise its services as well as offer some of its services like, new registrations, answering frequently asked questions among others (Segalstad, 2008).
Considering how NYSDTF carries out its activities, the massive population it serves, the challenges it faces and the achievements is has made in its day to day operations, strongly the company should take action to improving its services. Taxation is a vital and important activity in any growing and already grown nations thus NYSDTF provides an essential commodity and therefore needs to be current and organized for its services.
As noted elsewhere in this paper, the implementation of the mobile tax payment shall be dependent of the legislation of laws that shall permit such a move. The agency may push for a private bill in this regard (Bernardi, 2008).
Conclusion
On personal grounds I would recommend that NYSDTF adopts live chat added functionality on top of them providing electronic filling with some bit of urgency. As noted in the paper, the population served by this agency is big and taxation is vital for the government also its people thus needs to take into consideration the facts mentioned above for it to continue operating effectively and efficiently.
The live chat will address issues that are not clear to their clients when using the organizations online services. Tax collection patterns vary from one state to another and keep changing from one time to another and in this respect New York State Department of Taxation and Finance needs to adopt a system that will enable it capture proper records and give responses fast.
The organization confesses to have adapted staff that is not trained and thus had a great task and still concerned to making sure that the staff is trained and properly trained.
References
Baschab, J., Piot, J., (2007). The executive’s guide to information technology. New Jersey: John Willey & sons Inc
Bernardi, L., (2008). Tax systems and tax reforms in Latin America. New York: Routledge
Evans, J., and Lindsay, W., (2008). Managing for Quality and Performance Excellence Eighth Edition. New York: Thomson South-Western
Kirk, A., (2009). Information Technology. New York: print Matters Inc
Segalstad, S., (2008). International IT Regulations and Compliance: Quality Standards. New Jersey: John Willey & sons Inc