The structure of the IT Unit

The tax administration´s structure has followed different guidelines through time.  Some have been structured by tax type: income and profits from corporations’ taxes; excise taxes (liquor and cigarettes); vehicles; or estate tax. Others are structured with a typical functional division where collections, audit, and technical – the latter one with different names – are frequently shown at the first level of the structure. More recently, some administrations have been structured by taxpayer type: large business and international; small businesses and self-employed (including professionals, freelancers and single-person shops); employees; tax-exempt and government.

The actual criteria are almost always mixed. For example: at the operational levels, a regional division is usually present. Structures guided by function may have specific units for large businesses that sometimes operate as a region. Some structures, especially many years ago, were very hierarchical with directorates, managers, divisions, departments and sections. Some structures are flatter, others are like a matrix and sometimes like cellular based. The virtues and shortcoming of these structures are the subject of another discussion.

Somewhere within these structures there is a unit covering information technology and communications issues. Before, it was usually in the bottom-half of the structure hanging from someone else.  Names such as “Data Center”, “Data Processing”, “Organization and Systems,” “Computing Center,” “Technology”, “Information Technology and Communications” have been used followed by appropriate names such as: Directorate, Office, Department, or Section, and sometimes with qualifiers such as a general, national, or regulation.

This technology unit has its own structure with variations and different names but it could in various parts resemble the pattern that we have seen in the diagram below:  a unit for systems development (sometimes with maintenance and development as two separate functions).  The structures have usually a production unit, responsible for managing and operating the data center, their equipment and the system backups. Sometimes they have divisions for database management and virtualization and server management. Also a technical support unit would be present. It would be responsible for assisting users with equipment (real or virtual), desktops, laptops, mobile devices and sometimes applications support.  And, finally a network and communication unit that manages local and wide-area networks and do other things such as: cables, wireless services, access to smart phones, Internet connections, connections with banks, VoIP and the configuration of switches, routers, firewalls and other networking boxes.

I have also seen units responsible for security and quality assurance issues; and those for Research and Development for the adoption of new technologies.

The structure of the Development Unit varies considerably for different reasons. Among them, whether the administration is more like a contract management rather than a software house, but also to aspects related to the Development Methodology used: RUP, SCRUM, XP. It is quite common that those developments are managed by projects and that each project will be equipped with the resources it needs. For example: an architect, an analyst, a couple of developers, an HTML5 expert. And, sometimes, the person who builds a part of a system for invoice-control today will work on a reimbursement mechanism for diplomats tomorrow. The following week could work on the implementation of the Authorized Economic Operator.

Today, by reviewing the arquitecture of the information services some administrations have, we can verify the presence of silos or islands in terms of systems: repeated information captured here and there with difficulties to see the processes from end-to-end. Officials of the user areas often find that what was built differ from what was specified allegedly because of the lack of “business” knowledge from developers.

I wonder if as suggested by some large enterprises CIOs, it would make sense to structure the IT unit after the image of the organization. To replicate the management structure within the IT unit, whatever its name,  with the horizontal support of some common services.

In the above example, the IT Unit reproduces the structure of this hypothetical administration. The common services include support for some business aspects as the taxpayer registration or the current account; and for some more technical aspects such as workflows and a common and secure access to applications. The divisions would directly look after the Large Business unit, Medium Sized Taxpayers, Employees and SME under Simplified Regimes.

What do you think?

Regards and good luck.

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