What networks say

The previous post, about musical tax collection, focused on the effect of beating the drums, i.e. informing about the Administration’s actions. It is no secret that one of the elements to increase the taxpayers’ risk perception is to let everyone know about their noncompliance.

If the administration closes down premises because invoices were not submitted, it has to be known. If some taxpayers were sanctioned because their tax printers’ memories were modified, it must be known. If information crosses detect that health professionals did not report all their income, it must be known. If the expenses of a public person do not match his reported income, it must be known.

Improvements in services, new programs, and management results are also element to be known. Of course, if these results are good, it is much better.

Certainly, tax administrations design mechanisms against non-compliance, such as holding press conferences, placing yellow ribbons or white seals on doors, etc. If, for example, a well-known church library is closed because of billing problems; or if a showbiz personality appears driving a vehicle that entered the country with an illegal tax exemption, these may be headlines. But it is more difficult to determine if many actions on more anonymous taxpayers are sufficiently known to be a deterrent against non-compliance.

There are several options in order to improve this situation. Among them, to find references in the media about the Administration and its actions; or perform perception studies on compliance, non-compliance, and the Administration work as developed in Chapter 3.2 on the “dissuasion capacity” (deterrence) of perception studies developed this year by CIAT with the sponsorship of GIZ about Panama and Bolivia.

The social networks may also be a way to assess this issue. I am not saying that the Administration should spend time twitting about who they are closing down. I don’t know if this is useful, or even if it would be authorized. What I mean is that what is said on Twitter, linkedIn, Google + and Instagram about the administration and its actions, or about regulation reforms and new services, should be analyzed.

Many people use these social media to express their opinion, or to refer to something they read. When I was writing this post I did a quick search on hashtags with the some of our administrations’ acronyms in the last hours. Some of the tweets by identified users included topics on tax evasion and football, micro-reports on seized contraband goods, and comments on the control of false invoices; or about the very annoyed reaction of users angry at the slow pace of an official, or the unavailability of an Administration system. In our times (when many people express deep feelings about things such as actors’ roles as batman), it is likely that when the Administration close a business, this event may be reported by any person passing there with a mobile phone. It is also probable that when a new platform or service is not working, or if something affects the reputation of the Administration, this situation will be quickly reported. Is this an opportunity or a threat?

A very interesting article by Sinan Aral in the Harvard Business Review describes a project on this analysis type in relation to the New York Times. They are using shortened URL from Twitter and Facebook that points back to New York Times content, and then combining them with the browsing logs of what those users do when they visit the NY Times.

The article describes the readings of three articles and their presence in social networks:

In a first case, an article had many reading access but had little or very little presence in social networks conversations; in this case, a prominent link on a blog or a news story that referred to the story, rather than the Twitter conversation itself, is probably driving the traffic.

A second case was about an article which caused much conversation on twitter but the article itself received little traffic; so this was an article that many mentioned but few read.

In a third case, both the amount of interactions in social networks and the traffic to the article itself were enormous, and probably in a causal relationship.

Even if this particular analysis is very different from the tax administration topics, it illustrates very well the type of study that could be done about what is being said and known about our administrations. In addition, the data visualization deserves special mention.

Greetings and good luck

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