Bob Geddes has over 30 years of experience working for the Australian Taxation Office (ATO). He has held several senior director roles managing teams and projects. He has strong strategic thinking, analytical, communication, and relationship building skills. He has expertise in areas such as project management, risk analysis, and cross-government data sharing arrangements.

1. RESUME
Bob Geddes
12 Parklane Place Phone: 0420 966 430
Carindale QLD 4152 Email: bobgeddes@bigpond.com
Key skills and personal attributes
• Strategic thinking: a highly strategic thinker with proven ability to balance the
needs of the client or target audience with the vision and direction of the
organisation
• Analytical thinking: the ability to distil complex issues into simple-to-understand
solutions
• Collaborative and practical in approach to ensure a sharp focus on business
priorities and achieving results
• Excellent communication, writing and presentation skills, and strong negotiation
skills
• Proven ability to build strong relationships with stakeholders from all levels and
varied backgrounds to enable the free flow of communication and the speedy
resolution of issues
• Highly experienced in Project Management and Risk Analysis with the courage to
challenge the status quo to maximise project deliverables
• High-level skills in legal research, law interpretation and technical-based writing
• Excellent attention to detail
• Honest and resilient with a strong work ethic
Educational qualifications
Bachelor of Economics, James Cook University of North Queensland
Recent career summary
Overview
I joined the Australian Taxation Office (ATO) in 1983, as a base-level clerk. I
progressed through a number of roles and functions, and from 2002 until accepting a
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2. voluntary redundancy in October 2014, I undertook various roles at senior director
level (Executive Level 2, Zone 2).
June 2013 – Oct 2014 National Director, Enterprise Register & Accounts EL2 Zone 2
Jan 2013 – May 2013 Senior Director, Business Registration & Reporting EL2 Zone 2
2009 –2012 National Director, Enterprise Register & Accounts EL2 Zone 2
2008 – 2009 National Director, Business Delivery, Client Register EL2 Zone 2
2007 – 2008
Project Manager –
Change Program readiness projects
EL2 Zone 2
2006 –2007
Project Manager –
Corporate Interest Projects
EL2 Zone 2
2002 – 2006
Director, Production and Change Management, ATO
Operations
EL2 Zone 2
Highlights
Each of the above positions reported directly to an Assistant Commissioner who had
overall responsibility for the area. Enterprise Register and Accounts (ERA) was
created in October 2009 as part of the new Operations business model implemented
in the ATO. The business model clearly separated the ATO’s processing capability
from product management responsibilities.
A key objective of ERA was to shape the strategic direction of the ATO’s Client
Register and client accounts, and to manage them to ensure they met the needs of
the various business areas across the office that relied on them.
My specific area of responsibility was the Client Register. There was a strong focus
on improving the taxpayer experience in obtaining a Tax File Number, while
managing the risks around the integrity of the Register – risks underlined by the
increasing occurrence of identity theft and tax fraud in Australia and internationally.
At the same time, there was a strong focus on cutting red tape and moving to
electronic interactions and away from paper forms.
A specific area I drove during 2013 and 2014 was address integrity. This was aimed
at understanding, reporting on, and improving the state of address holdings in the
ATO’s client register. I commissioned new reports, new macros for bulk updating of
incorrect addresses, and I chaired a cross-office group that explored the potential for
using additional sources of address data to update client records. While the ATO is
moving increasingly towards electronic delivery of notices and correspondence, the
insights and approaches we developed will be applied to managing all contact details
on clients’ records.
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3. I was part of the ERA leadership team, playing a key role in planning and shaping
ERA’s direction and establishing its governance arrangements, including its
contribution to corporate risk management and governance.
For five months in 2013 I transferred to the business area responsible for managing
the Australian Business Register (ABR) to fill a position temporarily vacant. The
position was a product-management role similar to my ERA role, but the
environment and specific functions of the ABR area were unfamiliar. I was able to
apply my strategic, analytical and relationship-building skills in this new environment
to improve the working relationship with processing areas, streamline complaints
handling arrangements, and contribute to the area’s planning for 2013-4. During this
period I took part in a 2-day business-register information-sharing seminar with
representatives from New Zealand and Canada.
Cross-government involvement
My role with the Client Register, particularly in terms of TFN registrations, required
good ongoing relationships with the Department of Immigration and Citizenship, the
Department of Human Services and the Australian Business Register, as well as with
a major external service provider.
I was closely involved in data-sharing arrangements with the Child Support and
Centrelink Programs within the Department of Human Services. In 2010 I finalised
the revision of the formal agreement between the ATO and Child Support for access
to ATO information and for tax garnishee arrangements. I established a
management committee of representatives from each agency to manage the
relationship, ensure security and monitoring processes were in place, and deal with
any issues that arose.
In 2011 I had responsibility for the development and deployment of the improved
tax garnishee arrangements between the ATO and Centrelink. The arrangements
supported a government initiative to improve the collection of debt owing to the
Commonwealth. A revised Memorandum of Understanding between the agencies
was finalised in conjunction with deployment of new systems in both agencies in July
2011.
The following year I oversaw the development of tax garnishee enhancements for
Child Support, utilising the platform and design successfully developed with
Centrelink.
In 2012-13 I was one of the two principals engaged in managing a contentious issue
connected with Adjusted Taxable Income data and policy, involving representatives
of the Department of Human Services and the Department of Families, Housing,
Community Services and Indigenous Affairs. There were detailed policy, design and
system issues to be resolved, to ensure correct information was captured on tax
returns – information required by both the ATO and Human Services to correctly
apply government policy and ensure correct assessments for tax payers, benefit
recipients and child support payers. We successfully negotiated changes to tax
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4. return forms, return preparation software and published information, which were
implemented in July 2013.
The ATO’s interaction with other agencies is in line with the strong movement
towards whole-of-government approaches and the community’s expectations of
government service.
Strategic planning
The ATO has a well-established strategic and tactical planning framework. Strategic
direction is documented in the Corporate Plan, and Business Line and business-area
plans outline the strategies and tactics that will deliver the corporate outcomes. I
was directly involved over several years as a leader in the strategic plans of my
various areas, and in the tactical plans of the teams within them, ensuring clear line
of sight from an individual’s performance agreement through the Line level plan to
the corporate plan. As a result I have a comprehensive understanding of a planning
framework, its purpose and its implementation.
I am recognised as a strong strategic thinker, with a broad focus that I apply to the
business or product area I am helping to lead. In managing the Client Register, the
focus was on the register from a broad enterprise perspective, determining integrity
benchmarks and measures, assessing fitness for purpose and building products that
were well understood and able to fully support community expectations,
government policy and initiatives, and internal business users.
Processing team management
In the second half of 2010 I had overall responsibility for four High Risk Refund (HRR)
teams. The period was challenging because it included the peak income tax
processing period, diminishing resources and the pilot of a new work management
system, which involved some degree of anxiety for staff. To successfully manage the
workload it was necessary to review and redesign work practices. The teams’
outcomes were successful both in the terms of the system pilot and achieving work
targets.
My immediate prior role was as national director, business delivery, Client Register.
In that role I had responsibility for the performance of 14 processing teams in five
sites, including monitoring and reporting on achievement against service standards,
prioritisation of work on a weekly basis, and involvement in the more difficult
staffing issues where necessary. The role required a strong focus on achieving
results week by week, strong and productive working relationships with team
managers, and constant review of work on hand, priorities and targets. The period
in questions was particularly challenging, as we faced resource constraints, a
commitment to the ATO’s Change Program as one of the highest corporate priorities,
and high-priority government initiatives.
One significant government initiative was the Tax Bonus Payment early in 2009.
Although I was not directly involved in that project, my processing teams were
significantly impacted, through the diversion of experienced resources to the project
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5. and the corporate commitment to minimising backlogs of Client Register update
work prior to any payments being made. Flexibility and resilience were required,
and we successfully managed the processing teams to achieve very low levels of on-
hand work by the end of the financial year.
Project management
From 2006 to 2008 I managed a number of significant projects, several concurrently.
A major project was the development of a Practice Environment in conjunction with
new systems being built by the ATO Change Program. The intention was to provide
an environment that mirrored the navigation, structure and functions of the new
production environment, which users could access to familiarise themselves with the
new systems, without risking production data.
This represented a difficult challenge, both in designing it so as to meet the range of
users’ requirements, and in terms of its technical development. I successfully called
on networks and contacts to overcome most of those challenges, and most aspects
of the project tracked on schedule, despite having to compete for many of the same
resources as the Change Program itself, particularly for technical system support. In
the end, the Change Program prevailed and a corporate decision was made to
discontinue the Practice Environment, though the experience was nevertheless
valuable and rewarding, calling as it did for strong resilience, flexibility and
persuasion.
Earlier, I was asked to manage a challenging project that involved correcting the
overcharge of penalty interest for some 300,000 income tax payers. The overcharge
occurred in a very limited circumstance, though it affected a range of taxpayers, and
the main point of difficulty in correcting it was the lack of system support and system
knowledge related to that circumstance. It was necessary to call on my networks in
the Office to identify people able to assist, to assemble a small project team,
undertake detailed analysis, tailor approaches to different categories of cases,
organise a series of complex bulk correction runs, and send personalised letters to
each taxpayer. I managed the project through seven correction batches and
mailouts, and brought it to a successful conclusion with no complaints from the
community about incorrect letters or incorrect calculations.
I have undertaken project management courses and I was fully aware of the ATO’s
project management methodology and governance. My approach to project
management is to take a strong and clear focus on the intended outcomes, while
meeting necessary documentation and reporting requirements so as to ensure
transparency and good governance. I see the framework or process not as an end in
itself, but as a means of meeting requirements of governance and internal and
external scrutineers.
In early 2007 I was the business manager for the project that enhanced Shortfall
Interest Charge functionality in the ATO’s income tax processing system. The
functionality was included in the annual Tax Time release for 2007, a release subject
to stringent and comprehensive management control as one of the Office’s baseline
capabilities – the ability to process income tax returns and make assessments of tax
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6. liabilities. The Shortfall Interest Charge regime was a recommendation of the
government’s Review of Self Assessment and as such had a high profile with the
government and the community. I brought my project to a positive conclusion and
the functionality was implemented successfully.
Business support
For several years before that, I was involved in business support areas.
Establishment of business support capability was a response to the perceived
distance of Information Technology areas, and particularly Applications
Development, from business areas, providing the link between the two, with a firm
business focus. Initially, business support areas were established around particular
revenue lines or tax types. While that arrangement did provide a useful link for
business into IT processes, it fell short of a coordinated enterprise approach, which
did develop over time.
I became involved in the early days of business support, and as a director I was
influential in its evolution. With the strategic objective always in mind, i.e.
enterprise processes that provide seamless and practical interaction between
business and IT areas, I helped plan, design and implement support arrangements.
Functions included specialist business support for system users, web publishing
services, incident and problem management, change management, and production
planning support.
The processes we implemented initially were based on ITIL methodology, adapted
particularly for business areas rather than with a specific IT focus, and tailored to
mesh with the corporate ITIL-based processes that were implemented for IT.
Bob Geddes
3 July 2015
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7. liabilities. The Shortfall Interest Charge regime was a recommendation of the
government’s Review of Self Assessment and as such had a high profile with the
government and the community. I brought my project to a positive conclusion and
the functionality was implemented successfully.
Business support
For several years before that, I was involved in business support areas.
Establishment of business support capability was a response to the perceived
distance of Information Technology areas, and particularly Applications
Development, from business areas, providing the link between the two, with a firm
business focus. Initially, business support areas were established around particular
revenue lines or tax types. While that arrangement did provide a useful link for
business into IT processes, it fell short of a coordinated enterprise approach, which
did develop over time.
I became involved in the early days of business support, and as a director I was
influential in its evolution. With the strategic objective always in mind, i.e.
enterprise processes that provide seamless and practical interaction between
business and IT areas, I helped plan, design and implement support arrangements.
Functions included specialist business support for system users, web publishing
services, incident and problem management, change management, and production
planning support.
The processes we implemented initially were based on ITIL methodology, adapted
particularly for business areas rather than with a specific IT focus, and tailored to
mesh with the corporate ITIL-based processes that were implemented for IT.
Bob Geddes
3 July 2015
Page 6