A new team at Welsh Revenue Authority is focused on reducing and preventing taxpayer’s debt – with CDPS’s support
A new, internal team at Welsh Revenue Authority (WRA) is focused on reducing taxpayer debt. They are using Lean, Agile and user-centred design approaches, with CDPS’s support.
WRA administers Land Transaction Tax. When a person or an organisation buys property or land in Wales, they pay tax on that transaction. 99% of people pay the right tax at the right time, but there’s a small number of people who don’t.
What we discovered
The debt service team has been set up to make sure the debt recovery process is simple, fair and efficient. In discovery, the team have been spending time finding out why some people don't pay, what their needs are, and the opportunities and challenges for reducing the likelihood of being in debt.
During discovery the team learned that:
- a tiny amount of people did not pay on time, <1%
- non-payment is usually accidental; it’s not intentional
- most people settle quickly - within 5 days after a reminder
- manually chasing people to settle takes time and it could be more efficient - for everyone
Prevent, optimise, inform
The team is now in “alpha” - a phase in product development that allows teams to safely explore the art of the possible, test their riskiest assumptions and understand the user by building working prototypes.
The approach being explored is to:
- Prevent people from going into debt accidently
- Optimise the process of collecting debt so people spend less time in debt
- Inform the right authorities of long-term debtors to make debt collection efficient
Building prototypes
The team are using Lean and Agile ways of working to test their ideas, assumptions and hypotheses. A few examples of how they are doing this include:
Prototyping a simple debt calculator to test whether it’s possible to calculate what’s owed. Is it accurate? Does it save time? It took only a few days to build and so far, it’s saving two and a half minutes per transaction. Added up, that's quite a lot of time saved. The team are iterating and building trust with their colleagues and senior stakeholders so they can roll it out to everyone that needs it at WRA.
Simpler payments are being tested with taxpayers. Currently there’s no way for taxpayers to pay online or over the phone. Technically this is straightforward to implement but will taxpayers trust it and use it? Does the payment landing page provide all the right information? Is it clear what to do next? A simple prototype is being tested with taxpayers and conveyancers to see how they respond.
A reminder letter is being tested to see whether it reduces the number of people accidentally falling into debt. The team is running an A/B test - a limited test with a handful of people and comparing it to what currently happens, where the reminder letter is sent on day 5.
Delivering as a team
The team is made up of WRA staff across operations, finance, technology and insight. These ways of working are new to most of them and it’s a learning experience for everyone. And yet, within 5 short weeks, the team is delivering value using incremental delivery to test and learn. The team are enjoying this way of working. They feel trusted by their senior colleagues to get on with things and feel liberated by the sense of momentum.
Giving people the opportunity to experience Agile methodologies or user-centred design is the best way to learn. All the team attended the Agile Fundamentals course run on behalf of CDPS. We embedded a team coach to provide light-touch support to help them day to day.
If you have any questions about our work, please leave a comment or email us.
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What we’ve learned about working in the open