If you’ve ever prepared or filed a tax return you’ve no doubt wished for a more efficient process, especially when it comes to receiving refunds. It turns out that the IRS feels your pain. In fact, the agency is currently in the middle of a major transformation to make everyone’s life easier come April each year.
The IRS is “building a foundation that will enable [it] to help taxpayers and businesses for years to come,” according to the agency’s Harrison Smith. Smith is the IRS’ Enterprise Digitalization and Case Management Office Co-Director and is largely responsible for digitization efforts. The agency’s latest initiative, Digital Intake, leverages “cutting-edge technologies via a revolutionary procurement approach” to expand digital scanning capabilities.
To date, the agency has already scanned more than 120,000 Forms 940, a twenty-fold increase compared to this time last year. The IRS will need to continue that pace — Americans filed fewer returns online in FY2021 relative to FY2020, which represents millions of additional paper documents for the IRS to scan. While the focus of Digital Intake is scanning, the agency’s digitization efforts are about far more than turning paper documents into digital facsimiles.
Agencies Can Lean on Technology for Resilience, Security, and Efficiency
IRS Commissioner, Doug O’Donnell emphasized how Digital Intake is part of a broader transformation aimed at “saving time and creating efficiencies for taxpayers, the business community as well as tax professionals and the IRS.”
The initiative also highlights government agencies’ long-standing need for modernization. Agencies like the IRS must contend with reams of physical data and then effectively store and manage it once in digital form. As agencies shore up operational inefficiencies, they’ll lean on technologies that can help them become more resilient and secure while empowering the workforce to do their jobs without getting bogged down with tedious tasks.
Though the current initiative discusses scanning, it’s part of a broader digitalization strategy that, IRS Chief Information Officer, Nancy Sieger said, will “help people get the assistance they need and reduce paper, in addition to improving the agency’s underlying technology infrastructure.” That underlying technology infrastructure will serve many vital purposes, including managing sensitive information and accurately capturing data from paper forms.
If implemented correctly, the technology infrastructure Sieger describes will enable far more than more efficient scanning, especially if government agencies adopt scalable tools that offer more than one specific capability. Systems that perform intelligent content capture, for example, can automate the collection, and storage and enable easy access to large volumes of data and assets. Intelligent capture systems that also act as a platform for file sharing, collaboration, content management, business intelligence, integrations, or process automation can unlock organization-wide efficiencies.
Multifaceted systems can also help government agencies contend with digitization’s biggest challenge, cybersecurity threats. The IRS cannot scan and store tax returns electronically without safeguards that ensure the security of those documents. For that reason, government agencies must adopt content-management technology that encrypts data in transit and at rest, while providing audit trails. With granular access controls and logs about who accesses what documents and when, digitization technology can empower employees while protecting the agency from outside threats.
Automation Unlocks Positive, Transformative Government experience
The IRS is not the only agency to undergo sweeping transformations. Research and analyst firm Gartner predicted that three-quarters of governments will implement multiple enterprise-wide hyperautomation initiatives by 2024. Already, more than 70 percent of polled government organizations have piloted or begun using robotic process automation during the 12 months trailing March 2021.
Automation is at the heart of transformations because of the sheer volume of time-consuming paperwork organizations handle. And though the latest IRS headline is about scanning, the agency is “working toward a fully digital future,” Harrison Smith said. The future includes standardized workflows, reduced call times, expedited return and refund processing, simplified identity verification, and increased systems availability, among other goals. All these goals, along with more efficient scanning, are only possible through digital process automation.
“Technology powers tax administration,” IRS CIO Nancy Sieger said. She and other stakeholders understand that everyone benefits from digitized processes. Constituents can work with the government on their time, without being tied to business hours. Staff can work more efficiently under streamlined review and approvals. Moreover, the IRS’ initiative creates a framework to guide other government entities. By building technology foundations that enable automation, agencies can unlock efficiencies, improve the constituent experience and help taxpayers for years to come.
The author Noel Loughrin, is Strategic Solutions Manager at Laserfiche
