HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) has selected IT services provider Netcompany to support the digital transformation of its Customer Services Group.
They have agreed on a three-year contract with options for two one-year extensions, with a base value of £75 million and a maximum of £135 million.
It is among a group of new build contracts awarded by HMRC – the others having gone to Accenture, Capgemini and IBM – and is focused on simplifying access and managements of citizens’ tax affairs through a personalised digital account.
The work will also extend to supporting the transformation of HMRC’s customer compliance and customer services groups.
It has been awarded the Crown Commercial Service’s Digital and Legacy Application Services procurement framework, lot 2a for large scale digital, integration and development services.
Established relationship
Richard Davies, UK managing partner for the Danish based Netcompany, said the new contract will build on its previous work with HMRC in developing the National Transit Computer System, and will involve responding to needs set out by teams in the department.
“For us it’s about putting teams into HMRC to accelerate the transformations around how you can galvanise the way people interact with the tax system,” he said. “There are a lot of different systems built up over the years and the aim is to enable citizens to a lot more from a self-service standpoint, and a need to remove the reliance on the telephone channel.
“Most queries come in by telephone and the call waiting times are very high, so when you are looking at the tax systems through a portal it would be easier for aspects of it to be digitised rather than going through a very congested channel.”
He said this could involve dealing with a wide variety of features of the tax system, including self-assessment and PAYE.
André Rogaczewski, CEO of Netcompany, said: “Through this partnership, Netcompany looks forward to working in partnership with HMRC to help realise their digital transformation aspirations, resulting in both better customer services and value to the taxpayer.”
HMRC reportedly has one of the largest and most complex IT estates in Europe, with over 600 systems, 800TB of data and 1,000 IT changes a month.
