Customer Solution Case Study
/ / Ministry of Revenue Quebec First to Offer Online Tax Remittance in North America
Overview
Country or Region:Canada
Industry:Financial Services
Customer Profile
The Ministry of Revenue Quebec (MRQ) is responsible for the collection of income tax and consumption taxes that pay for public services. It serves more than 5.4 million taxpayers, half a million businesses and self-employed citizens, and 3.6 million support program beneficiaries.
Business Situation
The MRQ wanted to improve the number and quality of its online services to give citizens and businesses easy access to important tax information. Due to the complexity of the existing infrastructure, integration was a key challenge.
Solution
After investigating solutions from Oracle and IBM, the MRQ chose to use the Microsoft® .NET Framework and Microsoft Visual Studio® .NET 2002 to design and build a new electronic service delivery platform.
Benefits
A better programming model
Improved customer service
Minimal impact on existing infrastructure
Scalability / "The .NET Framework offered easy integration with the [Microsoft] Windows 2000 Server…and helped us to design a more secure application. It also offered us a better programming model than ASP or J2EE.”
Yves Boivin, System Architect, LGS
As part of a global government strategy to improve online services offered to the public, as well as an internal goal to increase customer satisfaction and improve productivity, the Ministry of Revenue Quebec (MRQ) decided to build a new electronic service delivery platform. After evaluating solutions from vendors such as IBM and Oracle, MRQ chose the Microsoft® .NET Framework, a component of the Microsoft Windows® operating system, and the Microsoft Visual Studio® .NET 2002 development system because of the power, flexibility, and open architecture the technology offers. By using .NET technologies, the MRQ was one of the first fiscal administrations in North America to offer a complete set of online services for businesses and was able to increase the number and functionality of its online services, as well as help improve customer satisfaction and productivity.
Situation
Along with its internal goal to improve client-facing services and to provide more efficient levels of service for its stakeholders, the MRQ is committed to a global governmental initiative to expand online services to the public. The MRQ was also looking to increase the number of services it offered and to improve their functionality; for instance, it wanted to offer citizens and businesses the ability to inquire about their accounts online. Previously, this was strictly a manual process. Because the MRQ receives almost 10 million transactions by mail each year, demanding personal attention from an MRQ employee was an inefficient system and caused unnecessary work.
In order to accomplish these tasks, the MRQ conceived a new electronic delivery services platform, which it called the Electronic Exchange Project. The MRQ looked at solutions from various vendors, including Oracle and IBM, but chose to use the Microsoft® .NET Framework, a component of the Microsoft Windows® operating system, and the Microsoft Visual Studio® .NET 2002 development system because of the technology’s power, flexibility, open architecture, and scalability. Additionally, the organization wanted to move to an object-oriented development environment to improve its speed and ability to deliver both future online applications and existing technologies and skills within the organization.
"We conducted intensive evaluations on numerous solutions but decided to go with [the] .NET [Framework] for the future capabilities it offered," says Robert Lebel, Solution Architect, Ministry of Revenue Quebec. "Our internal network is Microsoft, our employees use Microsoft tools, and many of our legacy systems, services, and components were built with Microsoft developer tools. When we needed something to support this more flexible Internet application, [the] .NET [Framework] was the best option for us."
Solution
Due to the complexity and size of this endeavor, the project was divided into subprojects to be completed by different teams. To help with the management and implementation of the overall project, the MRQ engaged the help of Fujitsu Consulting (Canada) Inc., a Microsoft Certified Partner and leading global provider of consulting services and technology-based business solutions. Fujitsu developed a clear strategy and best practices to ensure the project was completed on time and on budget.
Another key subproject was called the Electronic Exchange–Common Functions project, which was implemented by Quebec City-based LGS, a full-service consulting and systems integration firm and Microsoft Certified Partner. LGS provided and managed the software and infrastructure needed to support the common services that would be used by all the projects to implement Internet and intranet transactions.
"Because the technological infrastructure and the actual services were different in this project—meaning different [Microsoft]Windows NT®[operating system] domains and servers—the main challenge was integration. Our job was to make the integration and management of these services easier," says Yves Boivin, System Architect at LGS.
To deliver the new online services, the MRQ and its partners developed an Electronic Service Delivery System that was completely built and operated on the .NET Framework. Using Visual Studio .NET 2002, the new system includes a complete set of transactional, authenticated Web services and also allows businesses to access customized services based on access rights and appropriate fiscal laws, which are delivered through a secure, authenticated portal.
Due to the sensitive nature of the data, which is highly confidential tax information, security and protection of privacy were of utmost importance and represented a major challenge for the MRQ. Another key challenge was integration due to the overall complexity of the architecture.
"For customers to inquire about their accounts, we have to go from the Web servers to the application servers, to the gateway servers, to the IDMS database on the mainframe, and sometimes through an Oracle database. It's very complicated," says Lebel. "The only way to integrate all of that so that the right person would have access to the right information without compromising anyone else's information was to use [the] .NET [Framework] to integrate all the pieces of that system."
In order to facilitate the access controls to provide the requested confidentiality, all of the common functions developed by LGS were developed using XML Web services. This provides more flexibility for future expansion of additional services and greater portability for the common services.
"The security support of Web services built with [the] .NET [Framework] helped us to know who was requesting the information, and then, from there, we could manage access security to other systems. Web services was the glue between Internet or intranet transactions and the common services," says Boivin.
Benefits
With the completion of this project, the MRQ became one of the first governments in North America to offer customers the ability to remit taxes online, register online, and check the results of transactions online. By leveraging the Microsoft .NET Framework, the MRQ was able to help improve customer satisfaction by offering increased online services and added functionality and was able to help deliver it quickly and easily using Visual Studio .NET 2002.
A Better Programming Model
By building the new system using Visual Studio .NET 2002, the MRQ was able to increase the speed of deployment of the online applications. With less coding needed and lighter production cycles, it was easier to build and maintain the applications, increasing the productivity of the development team and reducing the amount of work needed for future projects.
"With Visual Studio .NET [2002] as our development tool, the production cycles are faster, and it gave us a higher level of confidence about how the applications would perform within the production infrastructure," says Boivin. "The .NET Framework offered easy integration with the [Microsoft] Windows 2000 Server operating system and helped us to design a more secure application. It also offered us a better programming model than ASP or J2EE."
Improved Customer Service and Cost Savings
With nearly 10 million new transactions coming into the MRQ every year, the manual processing of these transactions was an inefficient and time-consuming process for the organization. "Each letter meant a lot of handling by a lot of people," says Lebel. "Because it was a manual process, there were many rejections, and it caused much more work than necessary."
By moving these services online, the MRQ is seeing tremendous time and cost savings. "Now, we have much fewer rejections because we could put some validation and check points into the electronic system. That saves us and them a lot of time," Lebel adds.
Additionally, in the past, if someone needed to check information in their account with the MRQ, they would have to write to the organization, go to a service counter, or contact the call center. Now, by using the new online services, they are able to easily get the information they need right away.
"Previously, companies contacted the call center 70 percent of the time for account inquiries. Now, companies can access their account on their own, which helps reduce the amount of time they spend on their inquiry and therefore saves them a lot of money," says Lebel. "It also helps us improve internal productivity as most things are handled electronically without the need for our staff to get involved."
Minimal Impact on Existing Infrastructure
In addition to the goal of achieving greater stability and better expansion capabilities, Web services built with the .NET Framework are helping the MRQ to minimize the impact on its infrastructure configuration. "We didn't have to deploy anything on the clients' back end to enable them to use the Web services we created. All they needed was the URL and the right to use the service—it was that simple," says Boivin.
Scalability
Based on the success of the project so far, MRQ hopes to continue to expand services offered online and eventually use Web services to connect directly into banking institutions to speed up transaction processing. "For businesses and citizens who need to make tax payments, we want to have the kind of agreement with banking institutions where our systems would be connected directly. That way, they could file their tax remittance, and when it is time to issue payments, we would bill a bank automatically, and the payment would be executed into their own bank account —all done with Web services," says Lebel.
Microsoft .NET Framework
The Microsoft .NET Framework is an integral Windows component for building and running the next generation of applications and XML Web services.
For more information on the .NET Framework, go to: msdn.microsoft.com/netframework
Microsoft Visual Studio .NET
Microsoft Visual Studio .NET is the rapid application development (RAD) tool for building next-generation Web applications and XML Web services. Visual Studio .NET empowers developers to rapidly design broad-reach Web applications for any device and any platform. In addition, Visual Studio .NET is fully integrated with the Microsoft .NET Framework, providing support for multiple programming languages and automatically handling many common programming tasks, freeing developers to rapidly create Web applications using their language of choice.
For more information on Visual Studio .NET, go to: msdn.microsoft.com/vstudio
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