A contract with the community. Having listened to the community we fed back to the community what we had heard through a booklet (also provided electronically on our web site) entitled ‘Making it Easier to Comply’. We first published this in 2003. We put it out every year to say ‘these are the commitments we are making in terms of some really specific future products and services we are going to introduce; and this is how we delivered against the commitments made in the previous year’. Making such an external commitment is also useful internally in keeping us focussed on the main strategic intent.

Both external and internal transformation. Whilst the program started from the external stakeholders’ needs we realised early on that we would not be able to sustain and deliver many improvements unless we also transformed our internal capabilities (people, process and technology).

Emerging community based systems and whole of government. The changes we make are also intended to provide the foundation for a whole range of community based approaches (for example the ability for small businesses to lodge and finalise their returns directly from their accounting software), and improved whole of government approaches, for both businesses and individuals.

Leverage off capabilities and experience of other organisations. When we think hard about our business, most of what the Tax Office does, broken into its component parts, is actually very similar to what a lot of other organisations do. We have taken a strategic position to learn and take product from others, rather than (our traditional approach) do everything ourselves and build our own unique systems and processes.

Phase the program over the minimum reasonable timeframe. We talked to a number of our colleague revenue agencies and other big organisations around Australia and the world about their experience. A common finding was that many tried to transform too quickly and found there was too much happening in parallel. But an even greater number saw failure as a result of the change taking too long. They were living in two worlds, the new world and the old world for too long. Investment in both worlds was costly and complicated, and people also lost focus. So we chose an ambitious, but feasible, implementation timing as a deliberate trade-off between these two tensions.

Quick wins. As I mentioned earlier we committed to a significant number of improved products and services across all segments and channels. This bought some critical time to allow us to deliver the underlying changes, and also provided external and internal credibility to the program.

Top level leadership. The Commissioner led the effort right from the outset, and frankly, in an organisation as complex as the Tax Office, you would not want to try such a large scale change unless this was the case. This was complemented by a number of joint strategy and design activities including the senior management from across the organisation, as well as external expertise at key stages.