Presentation at iCMG World Bangalore 2015. Tax Norway won the iCMG Global Architecture Excellence Award for its business vertical; Government, Public sector and Defense.

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• Making Enterprise Architecture
succeed at Tax Norway
Karl Olav Wroldsen, CIO
Tormod Varhaugvik, Architecture Lead

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Agenda
• In short about Norway
• General Description of NTAX
• ICT in Tax Administration
• Government Digitalization Policies
• Why EA project?
• Implementation
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Norway - a wide-stretched and mountainous country
A large area above the artic circle
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The Mission
The Tax Administration's mission is to secure revenues
for funding the community.
The Tax Administration will maintain and strengthen
the legitimacy of the tax system.
The Tax Administration shall ensure an updated population
register and contribute to society’s other records.

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Organization and Key Figures (2014)
 Number of employees: 6200
 Overall Budget: 609 million €
 IT budget: ca 163 million €*
 Number of Taxpayers:
• Salary Employee: 4.7 million
• Self-employed: 351 000
• Companies: 269 000
• *) Earmarked funds for development included
Assessed tax/excise: 117 billion €
Income/fortune: 42 billion €
Petroleum: 20 billion €
Employer’s NIC: 16 billion €
VAT: 27 billion €
Nat. Insurance Contribution: 12 bill. €
Inheritance tax: 0,2 billion €

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• Data Collection from 3rd party
– Banks/Insurance companies/other financial
institutions
– Employers
– Household companies
– Kindergarten
– etc
• Made possible though continuous
changes in laws and regulations through
the years
• Quality of information is of great
importance.
– Electronically - directly from source -
elimination of human errors
Data Collection – 3rd party information

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«SKATE»
• Advisory Board for Digitization of
Public Sector
• Members:
– Director Generals from agencies
responsible for the National Common
Components
• Permanent members
– Director Generals from a selected
group of important service owner
agencies.
• Elected for a period

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National Common Infrastructure (components)

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Challenge
Balancing deliverance at the annual social mission with development
and deployment of new products and services
Public Sector Director Generals
Director General – Tax
LOB Leaders
CIO - CFO
LOB Leaders
CIO - CFO
CIO
Director General Trasury
LOB Leaders
CIO - CFO
CIO - CFO
• Arenas
• SKATE
• Board of Directors
• ELG – SLG
• Portfolio Control- and Management Board
• Portfolio advisory group
• Program-/Project management
• Steering Committees
• Technical Advisory group
• Council for Architecture and Standards
• Reporting
• Ministry of Finance
• Contact Forum
• Tools
• Enterprise Strategy
• IT Strategy
• IT Principles
• IT Regulation Plan («City Plan»)
• Architectual Target

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WHY EA PROJECT?

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NTAX – ICT History

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History has resulted in complexity

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The current state of the systems

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The Zachman Framework
What How Where
Data
Data
Data
Data
Data
Process
Process
Process
Process
Process
Tech
Tech
Tech
Tech
Tech
The Enterprise View:
The Process View:
The Designer’s View:
The Constructor’s
View:
The Programmer’s View:
Logical Systems
(How)
Physical Systems
(Which hw/sw)
The Conceptual
View (What)
Current
focus
Future
focus

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Tax Administration’s Process Chart

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IMPLEMENTATION

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• A-Scheme – Salaries from all Payroll systems live
– Of 223,842 deliveries 97% get response of <15 seconds
– Changes and fixes during production, 2-3 times per week
– All business logic run with consistency against previous
deliveries
– 24/7 - “Internet technology” with mainly Open Source
• Custom duties take over
– Solution Architecture in 4 weeks
• Common document production
– Multi-channel – Uniform communication
Success for Business
We managed a fundamental modernization
based on a paradigm shift in both
software design and implementation

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• New demands
– Self Service
– Huge increase in data volume
• A highly complex domain
– 10.000 data elements
– ... 7.000 rules in tax assessment only
• 10 years accuracy
• Challenging maintenance situation
– The Silo challenge
– Fragmented and duplicated data and logic
– “A track suit makes no sportsman”
• How to future proof the architecture and ensuring the
investment?
Choices of 2010
(c) Monthy Python, BBC

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Today's systems are unable to handle future demands
• Business
– Party holistic; CRM, self-service and risk management
– Event driven; data quality and ability to take action in time
• Technical
– Change ability; understandable, scalable and testable systems
– Standardized; established components and mainstream
implementation
• Cost of ownership
– Market access; available expertise and products
– Portability; secure investment by being able to move
Main Strategic Content

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• The target architecture consists of few artefacts
– Structural support with taxonomy
– Not business logic
– Helps to steer the whole organization
• A crossover illustration of process, components and
information for the future optimal state
• A regulation plan that’s detailed and contemporary
• A plan (and roadmaps) to get us there
• Addresses challenges
– Business
– Technical
– Steering and actionable activities (projects)
Top Level Artefacts

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Future Optimal State

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Contemporary Regulation Plan

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• The core of business systems powered by
Cloud-Native Architecture
• Document storage (BOX)
• XML documents, delimited information
• Metadata about content
• Time series of all changes
• Easy for 24/7 use
• Search Engine - "Tax Google»
• Access control and audit
• Component-based business process
• Business components side-by-side
• Annual independent components
• Event-driven throughput
• Ongoing facilitation regardless of use
Innovation; «Assessment Engine»
Prototype showed:
1000x faster
30% cost
30% hardware
1 Billion documents
Search in seconds
Linear scale

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Overcoming Challenges
Challenge Remedy
Need for Action Root Cause Analysis from external.
Realistic Target Architecture Right talent and experience.
Trust in Target Architecture Blogging and community reaction. International
expertise on finance technology. Prototype core
business challenge. Demo. Repeat message.
Develop Skill Prototype and workshops. Training.
Culture Change Find right talent. Colb’s learning cycle. Start small,
expand, learn by example. Once established new
components gain “Functional-Gravity”. Unit testing.
Get 1st Modernization
Project on Track
Consultants from Prototype. Non-optimal 2 times.
Success 3rd. Re-use is a business challenge.
Fear Uncertainty Doubt Repeat message. Understand cause of FUD. Have
success. Make people feel safe. Targeted message.
Ensure Project Scope City plan before Portfolio Board. Taxonomy.
Keep Project on Track Architectural audit. Renew financing at Portfolio
board.

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• Core Team of 3 with broad collaboration throughout the organization
– Right mix of competence and experience
– Target architecture after 6 months
– First modernization project came 12 months later
• Ensuring top level artefacts are realistic
– Anchored at the highest level in the organization
– Toughened against all existing systems (roadmaps)
– Toughened outward through blog and the IT-community
– Toughened through 2 prototypes
– Toughened against business requirements laid out in time
• Making the change
– Its in the boardroom that projects are scoped and ordered
– Its by the projects that solutions are developed
– Its the architecture groups that approve (and audit) projects solution design
– New challenges change plan, but not architecture
How we worked

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Further reading
• http://tormodv.blogspot.com/
Thank you
Karl Olav Wroldsen has more than
40 years experience in the business of IT.
Educated at the University in Oslo in 1975 he
entered his professional carrier working as a
research assistant at the university. He has been
in a private IT company (Norsk Data) for five
years before joining Tax Norway in 1990.
From various leading positions in the IT function
he has been involved in most of the larger systems
development projects at Tax Norway. Since 2008 as
CIO.
Tormod Varhaugvik has a Master of Computer
Science and works as Architect Lead at Tax
Norway. He is key behind the target architecture
and an innovative package of old and golden
patterns, fueled by exiting new technologies. He
has had many roles in IT-projects, and worked with
many types technologies and systems development
within the Enterprise Application domain since
1994.