Digital Workshop 'Foresight and Strategic Planning in Tax Administrations'

This Digital Workshop gave officials a better understanding of strategic planning methods and techniques, and looked at the fundamentals of strategic planning and foresight. The event also covered various analysis techniques used to inform the creation of strategic plans, such as SWOT and PESTLE, along with the use of scenario planning in order to test plans. In addition, workshop attendees took part in breakout sessions and learned about the experiences of other tax administrations.

In a departure from IOTA’s usual type of breakout session, at this event, the breakout rooms offered lots of creative ways for hands-on learning and opportunities to dive into the specific areas of strategic planning using the background for a fictional country in the Mediterranean called Virturia. The discussions in the breakout rooms revolved around the Virturian Tax Administration and participants were asked to put some of the analysis techniques that had been discussed into practice and use scenarios to test the strategic planning of the Virturian administration.

The event had a fantastic collection of speakers, with experts from the IOTA member tax administrations of Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Spain, and Sweden. They shared some of their examples of good practices in Strategic Planning, from the steps needed prior to creating a Strategic Plan, through to testing, implementation, monitoring, and reviewing of plans.

On the first day of the Workshop, presentations covered why Foresight and Strategic Management is important for Tax Administrations and experiences in developing Strategic Plans, including the use of SWOT and PESTLE analysis and Stakeholder mapping. The following speakers shared their practical experiences, challenges faced, successes and lessons learned:

• Denmark: “Emerging risks for Tax Administrations” presented by Torsten Cumberland Jacobsen;
• Belgium: “Strategic Planning unveiled: from PESTLE to (POWER)SWOT” presented by Daurdyves Essende.

The second day of the Workshop brought another group of challenging exercises and insightful presentations covering the implementation and review of plans, including how scenario planning can be used to test plans. The following presenters shared their practical experience, challenges faced, successes and lessons learned:

• Sweden: “Strategic foresight as a tool for monitoring and planning” presented by Johanna Delac;
• Spain: “From paper to reality: Implementing and monitoring strategic plans in a Tax Administration” presented by Raquel Sanchez;
• Finland: “How does our Strategy survive budget cuts?” presented by Heli Marttinen.

In addition to the presentations, the  Workshop took a very practical and hands-on approach. Participants in the first day’s group exercise practiced creating a Stakeholder map and carried out SWOT and PESTLE analyses using the information provided about the fictional country, Virturia. On the second day, the breakout groups undertook a scenario planning exercise to test the Virturia Strategic plan, using test scenarios provided by the event moderators.

The event was closed by an interactive Q&A Session where numerous questions were raised and the presenters shared their thoughts on the topics. All the materials, presentations, and video recordings are now available online on the event’s webpage. This Workshop was led by the IOTA International Taxation Expert Jonathan Heath, with support from his colleague, Oksana Stepanenko.