Page 8 - Transforming Tax Administration and Involving Stakeholders

cultural impact. It empowers them, shows them that they are trusted to perform and
encourages a healthier attitude to risk management.
In my first few months with ATO I began to focus on the first step in this direction: de-
cluttering. Administrative clutter made us less efficient and innovative; it also encouraged a
culture of adversity to risk and adherence to process. To prepare us for a new approach in
the following year, we removed processes and rules that were burdensome, unnecessary and
added layers of activity that were duplicated or served little purpose. We:

• removed 1000 pages of corporate policy documents telling staff how they should
work;

• removed 2400 pages of internal performance reporting that could not be used by
either external or internal auditors;

• replaced 13 different quality assurance frameworks with one;
• streamlined 120 different types of compliance audits into five. This allowed us to

shed 10,000 pages of instructions and procedure manuals;
• restructured our community consultation arrangements, reducing 68 ongoing

committees to eight;
• halved our internal corporate committees, orienting them to be more strategic and

outcome-focussed.
We have set a new mission to orient ourselves towards a better relationship with Australian
taxpayers: To contribute to the economic and social wellbeing of Australians by fostering
willing participation in the tax and superannuation systems. ‘Fostering willing participation’
is particularly significant - it conveys the turnaround in the way we think about engaging
with Australian taxpayers.
Approximately 95% of our taxpayers pay us voluntarily – they don’t need to be approached
through active compliance activity. I wanted our new approach to be a ‘design for the
majority’, where Australians’ experience with the tax system suited the needs of those who
did the right thing, rather than the relatively small number who didn’t.
To support the majority, we need to make it as easy as possible to engage with Australia’s
taxation and superannuation systems. Here are some of the things we changed in our
transformation’s early stages:

• We stopped using unfriendly, bureaucratic language in our letters to people, opting
for plain English instead and focussing more on advising people of their options
and what they needed to do

• We introduced an online newsroom for small business owners. This gave them a
centralised place to opt in for news on various topics and allowed us to reduce
paper mailouts by more than eight million pieces of paper

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