In last week’s MDM blog, we discussed MDM in the Public Sector. I want to continue that thread. After all, no industry faces tougher data quality problems than governmental organizations, and few industries suffer more significant down side consequences to poor operations than local, state and federal governments. One key challenge area is taxation. Tax Authorities face a multitude of IT challenges. Firstly, the data used in tax calculations is increasing in volume and complexity. They must improve service by introducing multi-channel contact centers and self-service capabilities. Security concerns necessitate increasingly sophisticated data protection procedures. And cost constraints are driving Tax Authorities to rely on off-the-shelf software for many of their functional areas. Compounding these issues is the fact that the IT architectures in operation at most revenue and collections agencies are very complex. They typically include multiple, disparate operational and analytical systems across which the sum total of data about individual constituents is fragmented. To make matters more complicated, taxation is not carried out by a single jurisdiction, and often sources of income including employers, investments and other sources of taxable income and deductions must also be tracked and shared among tax authorities. Collectively, these systems are involved in tax assessment and collections, risk analysis, scoring, tracking, auditing and investigation case management.

The Problem of Constituent Data Management

The infrastructure described above makes it very difficult to create a consolidated representation of a given party. Differing formats and data models mean that a constituent may be represented in one way in one system and in a different way in another. Individual records are frequently inaccurate, incomplete, out of date and/or inconsistent with other records relating to the same constituent. When constituent data must be aggregated and scored, information within each system must be rationalized and normalized so the agency can produce a constituent information file (CIF) that provides a single source of truth about that party. If information about that constituent changes, each system in turn must be updated. There have been many attempts to solve this problem with technology: from consolidating transactional systems to conducting manual systems integration projects and superimposing layers of business intelligence and analytics. All these approaches can be successful in solving a portion of the problem at a specific point in time, but without an enterprise perspective, anything gained is quickly lost again.

Oracle Constituent Data Mastering for Tax Authorities: A Single View of the Constituent

Oracle has a flexible and long-term solution to the problem of securely integrating and managing constituent data. The Oracle Solution for mastering Constituent Data for Tax Authorities is based on two core product offerings: Oracle Customer Hub and – optionally – Oracle Application Integration Architecture (AIA).

Customer Hub is a master data management (MDM) product that centralizes, de-duplicates, and enriches constituent data. It unifies fragmented information without disrupting existing business processes or IT investments. Role based data access and privacy rules guarantee maximum security and privacy. Data is continuously and automatically synchronized with all source systems. With the Oracle Customer Hub managing the master constituent identity, every department can capture transaction activity against the same record, improving reporting accuracy, employee productivity, reliability of constituent analytics, and day-to-day constituent relationships.

Oracle Application Integration Architecture provides a collection of core pre-built processes to support out of the box Master Data Governance across Oracle Customer Hub, Siebel CRM, and Oracle E-Business Suite. It also provides a framework to enable MDM integrations with other Oracle and non-Oracle applications. Oracle AIA removes some of the key inhibitors to implementing a service-oriented architecture (SOA) by providing a pre-built SOA-based middleware foundation as well as industry-optimized service oriented applications, all built around a SOA governance model that encourages effective design and reuse.

I encourage you to read Oracle Solution for Mastering Constituents Data for Public Sector – Tax Authorities by Roberto Negro. It is an outstanding whitepaper that describes how the Oracle MDM solution allows you to create a unified, reconciled source of high-quality constituent data and gain an accurate single view of each constituent. This foundation enables you to lower the costs associated with data quality and integration and create a tax organization that is efficient, secure and constituent-centric.

Also, don’t forget the upcoming webcast on Thursday, February 10^th:

Deliver Improved Services to Citizens at Lower Cost to your Organization

Our Guest Speaker is Ruben Spekle, from Capgemini. He will also provide insight into Public Sector Master Data Management and Case Management implementations including one that was executed for a Dutch Government Agency. If you are interested in how governmental organizations from around the world are using MDM to advance their cause, click here to register for the webcast.