Future of Vero.fi - today / Report by Aalto Masters Students on ITP 2015

THE FUTURE OF VERO.FI -TODAY!ITP 2015Team DoyleClient: VerohallintoStrategy and Experience Design

Lotta HankimoAnni LeppänenJaeyong LeeNghia ‘Max’ Tran

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1 . E X E C U T I V E S U M M A R Y • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

2 . P R O J E C T D E S C R I P T I O N 2.1. Brief • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 2.2. Stakeholders • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 2.2.1. The Team • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 2.2.2. The client company • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • - the Finnish Tax Administration • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 2.2.3. Other Stakeholders • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 2.3. Project process & roadmap • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

3 . i N T R O D U C T I O N T O P R O J E C T C O N T E X T • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 3.1 Verohallinto and digitalisation • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 3.2. Verohallinto’s agenda of change • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 3.3. Digitalisation in the public sector • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 3.4. National service architecture KaPA• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

4 . R E S E A R C H F I N D I N G S • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 4.1. Research methods• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 4.2. Analysis of current Vero.fi • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 4.2.1. Secondary research: desk research • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 4.2.2. Primary research: user interaction • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 4.2.3. Problem definition • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 4.3. User persona • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 4.4. Co-design workshop • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 4.4.1. The purpose of the Co-design workshop • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 4.4.2. Tasks for the workshop • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 4.4.3. The result of Co-Design workshop • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 5 . D E S I G N O U T C O M E S 5.1 Design principles • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

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5.2 Design concepts • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 5.2.1. Life events • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 5.2.2. My Tax• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 5.3. Design outcomes • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 5.3.1. Sitemap• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 5.3.2. Prototypes • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 5.3.3. Design features• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

6 . I M P L E M E N TAT I O N • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 6.1. Integration with suomi.fi• • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 6.2. Opportunities and challenges with implementation• • • • • • • • • • 6.3. Roadmap to implementation • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

7 . C O N C L U S I O N S • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

8 . R E C O M M E N D AT I O N S • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

9 . R E F E R E N C E S • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • •

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This is the final report of a project made in collaboration between a group of Aalto University students (Team Doyle, ‘the team’) and the Finnish Tax Administration (the client, ‘Vero’, ‘Verohallinto’). The project was part of Aalto University multidisciplinary minor called Aalto Information Technology Program (ITP).

The Finnish Tax Administration is the institution responsible for collecting the majority of taxes and tax-like charges in Finland. It is stated in their strategy that they provide proactive guidance, excellent service and credible tax control ensure the accrual of tax revenues. Furthermore their objective is to have customers handle tax-related transactions independently and in the correct manner. This is why their website vero.fi is a very important part of their customer service.

The team was tasked by the Finnish Tax Administration to renew their main website,

1 . E X E C U T I V E S U M M A RY

vero.fi. The website forms the core of Vero’s digital services. The main objective is to create a better, and more user centred, online service platform that will also decrease the amount of traffic at the Tax Offices and Vero’s call centre.

The project occurs when Finland is in a transition phase to a new government board with a new direction, strategy and future. Public services digitalization is one of the most important tasks proposed. Not just available online, public digital services should be efficient and user-friendly.

KaPA is having different projects and proposals to the new government that Verohallinto should consider, such as a new suomi.fi and the sharing database between all public agencies. A new suomi.fi is being conducted as a one-stop shop for all public services for both individuals and companies. It provides the platform for information and services delivery

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as well as secured technology for online communication between different parties. Furthermore, the new suomi.fi will be a place where end-users can find all of their own information from different public agencies.

Based on the desk research and the user research conducted the team was able to sort out the two main problems in the current vero.fi site. These problems that the team decided to work on are the information architecture, more precisely the way the information is arranged and presented on the site, and the need for personalized information for the customers. To solve the problems of current vero.fi and be proactive to the new digitalization strategy of Finland, team Doyle proposes two main desgin concepts: life-event concept and my-page concept.

The life-event concept is a method of categorizing information and service around

users’ life events. Users normally need public services in such life events and use keywords related to such events when searching information. Therefore, this life-event method will enable better search engine as well as information and services provide. The My Page helps users interpret their own tax data, and suggest personalized services with relevant and essential information. Users can communicate with system while getting data analysis, customized suggestions, and understanding their own tax situations.

A natural next step for Verohallinto after this project would be to start fully integrating to the new suomi.fi and really gaining the profit both the customers and the administration itself could have on this. Verihallinto wants to be a pioneer and the suomi.fi offers it a great chance for this. Another main point the team finds essential is a more comprehensive use of the Vero’s social media.

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2 . P R O J E C T D E S C R I P T I O N

Verohallinto (the Finnish Tax Administration, Vero) is renewing their main web page vero.fi in Autumn 2015. As a part of the multidisciplinary Aalto University minor program called the Information Technology Program (ITP), Team Doyle was tasked to redesign the web page and its layout with a specific focus on an individual user’s point of view.

The main reason for renewing the page is cost-efficiency. By moving people from offline services to using mostly online services Vero is hoping to be able to decrease the load to their call center and customer service offices and cut the personnel costs that now sum up to 66 % of Vero’s total costs. In order to do this, Vero wants its web pages to offer better

2.1. The brief

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proactive guidance and in that way to guide people to use more self service instead of calling or visiting the offices. In 2015 the Vero websites already provide a comprehensive array of digital services, such as Tax Card and deductions services. (Verohallinto, 2015a.)

The ITP Team Doyle is competing against an

in-house web design team at and the best solutions are implemented when the website construction begins this Autumn. Vero has asked Team Doyle to provide an analysis on the current vero.fi, a concept for the responsive prototype layouts, and future vision to help Vero see what they should do next.

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Anni LeppänenMA Creative Sustainability, Aalto University School of Arts

Lotta HankimoMScEBA Business Law, Aalto University School of Business

Lotta is a business student majoring in business law. Born and raised in Espoo and not willing to move. After ITP she’ll be focusing on her Master’s Thesis on taxation and hopefully graduating from Aalto University in 2016. Her interest in wine that started from a mere student activity has taken her to work in a wine bar and to hold wine tastings for large audiences, even at the Finnish Wine Fair. Her future career, however, will hopefully be in tax consulting.

Anni has a BA in social sciences from University of London. She has also studied graphic design. Her current studies combine these two backgrounds as her Masters programme at Aalto is about solving societal challenges with design methods. Anni has several years of work experience in the public and private sector. Before her studies at Aalto, she was the Science and Innovation Officer at the British Embassy in Finland. She has also worked in Terveyden ja Hyvinvoinnin laitos THL (Institute for Health and Welfare) and while living in London, she worked in several project management positions. Anni has a special interest in developing countries and solving societal problems. At Aalto she is currently working on a Master’s Thesis on ICT innovation.

2 . 2 S TA K E H O L D E R S

2.2.1. The Team

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Jaeyong LeeMA Collaborative and Industrial Design, Aalto University School of Arts

Nghia Tran (Max)MScEBA Accounting, Aalto University School of Business

Jaeyong is a passionate design student, mainly focusing on his study in design for experiences, and digital service design at the moment. His artistic backgrounds came from metal craft, product design, and visual communication such as illustration, graphic design, and animation as well. He is highly interested in user interface designs, interaction designs through user-centered approaches with critical mindset asking questions constantly to existing conceptions. He loves to collaborate, and loves to design for improving people’s lives.

Max got his BBA from Haaga-Helia University of Applied Science specialized in financial management. He has multicultural experience from working and studying in different places, which creates his strong teamwork skills for several types of project. Detail-oriented and logical thinking are his strong components. To balance the details and analytical focus from his accounting academic background, he loves meeting people and relaxing in a cafe for some small talks.

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2 . 2 STAKEHOLDERS

2.2.2. The client company: Verohallinto (Finnish Tax Administration)

2.2.3. Other stakeholders

Marjukka Ala-Harja Development manager, Ministry of Finance

Aleksi Kopponen Digitalisation specialist, Ministry of Finance

The Finnish Tax Administration is responsible for collecting taxes and tax-like charges from individual citizens as well as entities such as companies and associations. The FTA delivers customer service through its 19 Tax Offices, a call centre and several key websites such as Vero.fi. (Verohallinto, 2015b.)

In addition to the client company itself, Team Doyle has met some other significant stakeholders during the project.

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In addition to the client company itself, Team Doyle has met some other significant stakeholders during the project.

Verohallinto representative Mikko Mattinen Head of Communications

Maija Kühn Communication Specialist

Jukka Kyhäräinen Senior Inspector, IT Unit

Solveig HagnäsTax Ambassador

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2 . 3 P R O J E C T PROCESS & ROADMAP

Project plan10 June Set research questions, choose methods, de�ne objectives, set milestones

User research and background During 1-14 June

Conduct background research and data collec-tion. Deliverables: 1-3 user personas, service journey, problem mapping

Check-up IPresentation 17 June

Research results, problems de�ned, rebrie�ng, initial ideas for concept solution

Co-design workshop(s)Prototyping workshop: JulyUser tests: July-August

Prototyping, user testing

Check-up IIPresentation 5 August Mock-ups of interface ideas, service journeys, results of �rst user tests

Final presentationITP and client presenta-tion: last week of August

Final project deliverables in a presentation format

Final report28 AugustFinal project deliverables in a report format

Figure 2. Project roadmap

The project was initially planned to follow the schedule given to the team by the project coordinators. The project started by submitting the project plan in the early June followed by two check-up meetings with the client during the summer. between the check-up meetings most of the research was conducted as well as the initial design concepts created. The project reached its Grande Finale in the end of August, when the final presentation was held and this report finalized.

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The project was divided into three sprints: June, July and August.

The project and the research was divided into three sprints, which followed the initial roadmap and the schedule. The sprints were as follows:

June: Background Research: data gathering, problem definitionDuring the first sprint, several research was conducted to understand the current situation from different perspectives as well as to get a big picture of Finnish Tax Administration in Finland’s public agencies. The team analysed several conducted reports and surveys from Verohallinto and Ministry of Finance as well as regulation and guidelines from EU.

July: Development of Design ConceptsIn the second sprint, the team interviewed users, the client Verohallinto, and their staff to get the real feelings of different parties around this project.

From this user research as well as from the research of the first sprint, a better view of users’ opinion towards the current website, the current problems that exist along with it, and the digital trend that Verohallinto should consider was found. Based on the knowledge of users, we conducted the main persona, as our target to serve in the design

outcome.

As an important tool in customer-centred design, co-design workshop was also used to involve users in the design process. By doing so, the team was able to confirm our research findings and design concepts.

Additionally, the team met with a number of main persons working for the Ministry of Finance to gather a better view on the all over digitalisation of the public sector in Finland.

August: Prototyping and user interface designFrom the user research and confirming the design concepts, the team moved forward to the actual interface design. The team started by doing very simple paper versions of the different design concepts that week by week were developed into more advanced versions. By the middle of August these layouts were given the final design and eventually further developed into real clickable mock-ups.

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3.1 Verohallinto and digitalisation 3.2. Verohallinto’s agenda of change3.3. Digitalisation in the public sector 3.4. National service architecture KaPA

3 . I N T R O D U C T I O N TO P R O J E C T C O N T E X T

3With the new government, there is a big push in digitalisation but also the general trend of cutting costs and working more effectively on the public sector. We are on the verge of an important national milestone when the Ministry of Finance with its partners is launching a new citizen service portal on suomi.fi later this year. The winds for public sector services have been changing for quite some time now, and there is a drive towards user-centred services and digital by default models.

With these in mind, Vero’s service channels have been going through major change as well. With 14 million users in 2014, Vero.fi has become the central service delivery channel for Verohallinto. This is while the Call Centre received 3 million calls and the Tax Offices 1 million visits last year. Verohallinto has also introduced new ways to meet their customers, through an online chat and social media. Consequently, Verohallinto is often considered a digital leader in the public sector in Finland.

With this positive setting for vero.fi, what are the key objectives for Verohallinto? In Verohallinto’s organisational strategy there is a strong commitment in reducing the tax gap and simultaneously cutting operational costs. Not to forget that both of these things contribute to Vero’s ultimate goal of maintaining a functioning society in Finland.

What can a website do about these big things? By achieving ‘digital by default’, customer traffic to the Call Centre and Tax Offices decreases and savings are made. Furthermore, the website may utilise modern tools to offer better services, designed user-centric. Digital tools also form an integral part in Vero’s objective to move towards proactive guidance and advice, firmly reducing the tax gap each year.

Public sector reform, digitalisation and Verohallinto

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3 . 1 . V E R O H A L L I N TO A N D D I G I TA L I S AT I O N

Current state of Vero customer servicesThe Vero.fi is the 7th most valued website in Finland, and there is an average of 38 350 visitors a day and 14 million visits a year (2014). Already, the majority of Vero services are delivered online. Yet, many customers still prefer to for example order the Tax Card by phone or fill in their Income Tax Returns on paper. The percentage of Tax Cards ordered online was 48 % in 2014. Pre-completed Income Tax Returns are sent home by post every year, and 46 % made the corrections online in 2014. In 2015, the number increased 37 000 to 750 000 people using the online service. On a scale of 4-10, a recent user survey gave an average of 7.3 on user satisfaction.

In 2014, up to 4 million people visited the Tax Office or used the call centre services. Of this, 1 million visited the offices. This number has drastically decreased in the recent years. Encouraging people to access the services online would significantly reduce costs for Verohallinto. According to Vero surveys, the best customer satisfaction is in personal services (Call Centre and Tax Offices).

Offline customers

New chat serviceThe new Chat service had over 20 000 enquiries in a month (May 2015). Other less conventional ways Vero is serving customers: text messages reminders, tax truck, pop up Tax Office. Vero has become active on social media as well. Currently it has a presence in Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Snapchat. Verohallinto also collaborates with different kinds

of organisations such as the Martat association to motivate people over 65 to use the online services or train people in general to use Vero digital services.

About proactive customer services (EON) Vero is especially keen to increase the proportion of proactive guidance and advice services. Traditionally services have been focused more on reactive services. Now, Vero has dedicated a team called EON to focus on delivering proactive customer services. Their work takes place both online (website, chat, social media) and offline (tax truck, expos, events, stakeholder collaboration). EON’s work on guidance is about changing mindsets and encouraging more people to use digital self-services. EON’s advice services, on the other hand, focus on delivering professional advice to customers on specific tax issues. These two service models follow the general Vero customer service guidelines.

Vero assesses that the customers not using the web services are either those who have not found their way online, or have lower IT skills and/or preference to analog services. According to Vero surveys, the biggest barrier to using online services is fear of making mistakes.

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About proactive customer services (EON) Renewing the engine

Proactive guidance

Municipality services joining up

Vero on social media

3 . 2 . V E R O H A L L I N TO ’ S A G E N D A O F C H A N G E

There are several on-going key organisational development programmes at Verohallinto, and they play an important role in the context of renewing Vero’s website and its overall strategy for digital services.

Verohallinto has dozens of web services built over the course of decades. These are now being combined with a new software back-end solution called GenTax. The project implementing GenTax is called ‘Valmis-hanke’, and it will be completed in 2019. Read more about challenges and opportunities in GenTax and Verohallinto’s ICT strategy in Chapter 6: Implementation.

Verohallinto has established a team called EON, ‘Ennakoivan ohjauksen ja neuvonnan tiimi’ (proactive guidance team). It aims to help Vero customers to estimate their incomes better in order to decrease the rates of mistakes, and encourage customers to use Vero’s digital services.

Several public services at the municipality level are combined in the near future. This means that one office will serve customers on matters related to for example taxes, employment and policy services. Verohallinto is somewhat unhappy about these proposed changes as they would like to focus on building digital services.

During Sprint 2 of the ITP programme, the class of Strategy and Experience Design (SED) had two experts from the social media marketing agency Kurio sharing their approach to social media and branding. Team Doyle blogged about the ideas generated during this part of the ITP programme.

First blog post was an introduction to Verohallinto’s current social media presence.

URL: http://verodigitalfuture.tumblr.com/post/124239613235/vero-social-brand-yesThe second blog post introduces a social brand framework (based on the Kurio model) for Verohallinto. There are also some innovative ideas on how Vero could further benefit from being on social media.

URL: http://verodigitalfuture.tumblr.com/post/124241805355/are-you-a-sage-muse-or-a-pitchman

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Government Digitalisation Agenda

User centred public services

Team Doyle met with Aleksi Kopponen, a Senior Specialist at the Ministry of Finance, working with the Digitalisation Strategy. This is an integral part of implementing the new government programme. The digitalisation challenge is aligned with EU’s Digital Single Market agreements.

Information about the national digitalisation strategy will be updated at http://vm.fi/digitalisaatio

Public sector services are going through a great change, from law and civil servant centred to a citizen and user centred services. Applying a customer service approach to public services is turning public agencies inside out. While the process takes time in each organisation, digitalisation is one way that will increase the user-centred focus. In addition to civil servants adopting a customer service mindset, service design methodologies are growingly used in designing better, user-centred services across the government.

The customer approach to public services has been written into a national strategy paper: the government and civil servants have committed to a 2020 vision for user-centred services. (VM 2014.)

Government as Platform (GaaP)

The requirements for GaaP are as follows:

1. Focus on user needs: develop services for users and with users

2. Determine capabilities needed: build an understanding of the value chain

3. Map what is available within government and outside.

4. Identify what could be shared across the government.

3 . 3 . D I G I TA L I S AT I O N I N T H E P U B L I C S E C TO R

A new government programmeThe central theme in the new government is digitalisation of public services. One core idea in this is that “citizen’s information should only be asked once”, meaning that public IT systems and databases should be built to automatically communicate with each other. The government has also promised to build a real time income registry that could enable many future services for Vero. (Valtioneuvosto, 2015.)

The principles currently governing and/or gaining impetus in the public sector digital services:

1. Digitalisation2. User-centred services3. Government as platform (GaaP)4. Digital by Default5. Mydata

The term ‘Government as a Platform’ was coined by Tim O’Reilly. It has directed public sector digitalisation in UK and is spreading to other countries as well. The main message of GaaP is to maximise the shared capabilities and minimise departmental ‘products’, i.e. bespoke services. Essentially it means getting rid of silos between organisations under the public umbrella. The GaaP principle has become significant in the era of public sector digitalisation. Developing bespoke digital solutions is costly and may drive agencies commit to specific IT solutions or licenses, leaving little room for change and development. The GaaP proposes that public sector organisations build on shared capabilities and form a sort of platform that can benefit all.

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Digital by default

Mydata

Digital by default is a service standard developed in the UK. The UK government adopted an 18 point (previously 26 points) set of criteria for all of its public sector services in 2014. The UK government’s Digital Service Unit developed a comprehensive online manual for implementing the standard, it can be accessed here: https://www.gov.uk/service-manual/digital-by-default

Mydata is relatively new idea but Finnish experts have been doing some pioneering work on this. There is a growing need for people to access the data that is digitally collected of them, and usually stored across the digital universe. The idea behind mydata is that people should have the right and the practical means to control their own information. Additionally, up-to-date personal data should be available to the people and readable via machine interfaces. (LVM 2014.)

The principles of MyData are:

1. Human-centred2. Usable data3. New business opportunities

Useful resources on the GaaP:

• UK civil servants blogs on GaaP URL: https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2012/10/17/why-gov-uk-matters/ https://gds.blog.gov.uk/2015/03/29/government-as-a-platform-the-next-phase-of-digital-transformation/

• The book: Open Government, 2010 by Daniel Lathrop and Laurel Ruma: Chapter 2: Tim O’Reilly URL: http://chimera.labs.oreilly.com/books/1234000000774/ch02.html#government_ as_a_platform

• Computer weekly article: http://www.computerweekly.com/opinion/What-is-government-as-a-platform-and-how-do-we-achieve-it

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3 . 4 . N AT I O N A L S E RV I C E A R C H I T E C T U R E K a P a

Before KaPA, there was SADe

National service architecture

KaPA projects

SADe was the national ICT democratisation programme and it launched in 2009. Some core Vero digital services have been built within SADe, for example Palkka.fi. Within SADe, Vero has also collaborated with ELY centres in building the Oma Yritys Suomi -service for start-ups.

The national service architecture (kansallinen palveluarkkitehtuuri, KaPA) programme is the biggest public sector ICT project during its term 2014-2017. It was preceded by SADe (see above). The KaPA programme is under the Ministry of Finance’s Digitalisation Department. Finland’s Population Registry is responsible for KaPA’s practical aspects.

The Ministry of Finance is leading the KaPA project and they describe it on their website as follows:“The National Architecture for Digital Services will be a compatible infrastructure facilitating information transfer between organisations and services. The programme involves creating a national data exchange layer, the shared service views required by citizens, companies and authorities, a new national e-identification model and national solutions for the administration of roles and authorisations for organisations and individuals.”

KaPA and its web portal “suomi.fi” has been developed through important international benchmarking:

· the British version GOV.UK· the Estonian X-road· the Danish governmental platform

The service views are basically the visible part of the project - the service platform on suomi.fi. The national portal aims to provide information about

KaPA can be divided into four sub-projects:

1. The data exchange layer “The X-Road”2. ‘Service views’ (palvelunäkymät)3. Nationwide standard for electronic identification (eID)4. Roles and authorisation

Electronic identification (eID)

The new citizen messaging service

The KaPA team is working towards solving some key problems that are delaying progress across services in Finland. One is for example the electronic identification. Currently, organisations are using different standards such as tunnistus.fi or vetuma.fi. For example, Verohallinto is using the former, while the latter has been adopted by the new national service architecture. Citizens of Finland are mainly using their internet banking codes to login to these services. While in Estonia, each citizen has an eID card that enables them to both access public e-services and digitally sign documents.

The Ministry of Finance is also launching a new citizen messaging service (kansalaisen asiointitili). It is released during this year, and it will be very different to the one currently in use. According to Aleksi Kopponen, the major difference is that all public organisations can create their own user interface and just use the back-end structure provided by the government. This is also an opportunity for Verohallinto to set up secure communication with its customers. Users would login with their electronic identification and be able to send and receive messages and documents to/from public authorities. Each organisation can design their own ‘mailbox’ feature on their websites, deciding on the particularities of the messaging interface. Additionally, suomi.fi will have a general citizen inbox with all the messages, reminders and alerts collected together.

all public services and organisations, provide an access point for all the different e-services and even things like citizen mydata and secure messaging and reminder systems.

The X-road is a data exchange layer that is invisible for the end-users, the citizens. But it is a key component enabling all of the functionalities and data sharing that make the new services and suomi.fi work magic! Through these secure servers each database and organisation can be connected to the X-road and sharing data between organisations is seamless and secure. Marjukka Ala-Harja described the X-road as a kind of Internet - you cannot see it, but it is there, and it enables a whole of important and life changing activities.

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Public service repository

Ontology

One challenge on the current Vero.fi is the search engine. Content on the site is not easily discovered by the search. This is a relatively common problem for search engines inside websites. KaPA is building a data model that could enable building powerful search engines. This is called a ‘public sector service repository’ or PSDR (palvelutietovarasto, PTV). The development of PSDR was boosted by the EU Directive that made national services available to all EU citizens in the country. In order to accomplish this, the national services need to be discoverable online, across borders. In practice, the PSDR is the metadata of all public services: a machine readable description and access guide of the service. This will for example enable creating service maps (case study from Helsinki City) and multilingual search engines. Creating the metadata for the service portfolio will be mandatory for all public sector organisations, including Verohallinto.

KaPA has been developing a solution to organise the information on public sector services. The idea of the basic categorisation of information is based on commonly relevant life events. Technically this means producing metadata and an ontology. All this will be part of the back-end of the new suomi.fi and eventually cover all public services.

Currently the ontology will categorise public services into 8 citizen ‘user groups’, 8 business ‘user groups’, and 14 citizen life events.

KaPA and Verohallinto

Opportunities for Verohallinto

Vero and suomi.fi

Verohallinto has been involved in all aspects of the KaPA development. Senior Adviser Jukka Kyhäräinen from Vero’s IT Unit is the main contact person at Vero, working on KaPA collaboration and representing Vero at the KaPA Reference Group chaired by the Ministry of Finance.

KaPA will among other things enable secure and personal messaging with citizens. This can be used to for example sending reminders and official decisions. Above all, KaPA or suomi.fi is providing a national level government backed electronic identification (eID) for citizens. Reminders and push notifications on tax related deadlines have been planned for the upcoming beta.suomi.fi. Verohallinto could benefit from this and build

Currently there is only static content on tax related issues on suomi.fi. Verohallinto is preparing to move some of their web services to suomi.fi during 2015-2016. Verohallinto does not have plans to move any of their digital services to suomi.fi at this stage. In 2017, Vero aims to be able to send PDF documents to its customers via the suomi.fi eID service. Customers, on the other hand, will be able to send documents some time after 2017. Vero is focused in completing the GenTax and feels that the integration with suomi.fi should be done after that (Vision 2020). At that stage, income registry data can be shared with relevant customers.

Read more about opportunities and challenges with suomi.fi integration in the Chapter 6: Implementation.

their future digital services on top of the KaPA platform and suomi.fi.

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4.1. Research methods 4.2. Analysis of current Vero.fi4.2.1. Secondary research: desk research 4.2.2. Primary research: user interaction 4.2.3. Problem definition 4.3. User persona 4.4. Co-design workshop 4.4.1. The purpose of the Co-design workshop 4.4.2. Tasks for the workshop 4.4.3. The result of Co-Design workshop

R E S E A R C H F I N D I N G S

During this project, Team Doyle conducted a variety of field and desk research. As per the ITP Strategy and Experience Design track’s learning plan, user-centred service design was the key approach to research methods also in the project work. The work focused on desk research in the first sprint and user research was carried out during all 3 sprints.

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4 . 1 . R E S E A R C H M E T H O D S

During this project, Team Doyle conducted a variety of field and desk research. As per the ITP Strategy and Experience Design track’s learning plan, user-centred service design was the key approach to research methods also in the project work. The work focused on desk research in the first sprint and user research was carried out during all 3 sprints.

Service design methodology

Desk Research

Service design is a design methodology for creating better services. It is often paired up with user-centred design methodologies that focus on designing services for users and with users. Service design often includes building customer journey maps. The use of visualisations is very common. The final product of the service design project is a service blueprint. User design components often include methods such as personas, scenarios and user workshops.

Aalto ITP’s Strategy and Experience Design track included three courses taught along the project work: Strategic design, User experience design, and Prototyping and implementation.

WHAT? Desk research encompasses all the research tasks that are not included in empirical research, i.e. desk research is always secondary in nature. It might involved searching information from books, journals, the internet and other written sources such as company reports.

WHY? The importance of desk research is to know what kind of knowledge already exists on the project’s topic. Analysing the variety of materials is usually the best place to start a project. After this phase, it is easier to know what kind of empirical research is needed to complement the desk research.

HOW? In this project we requested a series of internal reports from Verohallinto. These included annual reports and past web analytics. Additionally, we conducted benchmarking of other tax organisations’ digital services, and analysed a wealth of content from international organisations such as OECD on the topic of tax related services.

List of reports received from Verohallinto:

• Verohallinto annual reports 2010-2014

• EON proactive customer service introductory slideshow

• Preliminary report on the redesign of vero.fi (06/2015)

• Vero24 service concept slideshow

• Report on vero.fi user survey (05/2015)

• Vero.fi general web analytics (slideshow) (1/2015)

• Vero.fi Usability report from 2011

• Notes on Vero’s involvement with SADe and KaPA.

List of benchmarked organisations:

• Website of the Danish Tax Administration

• Norwegian eGovernment platform

• Website of the Norwegian Tax Administration

• Website of the Australian Tax Administration

• Singaporean eGovernment platform

• Estonian eGovernment platform

• UK eGovernment platform: GOV.UK

• US financial services websites

• Finnish public sector websites: Kela, beta.suomi.fi

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User interviews and observations

WHAT? User interviews and observations are key parts of user-centred service design projects. Interviews can be done one-on-one or in small groups. Observations should be conducted either in a reality-based test environment or in the real life context.

WHY? Interviews and observations are vital for the designers to gain empathy and understand the user behaviour and motivations of key user groups.

HOW? This project conducted both individual and small groups interviews, and visited a Tax Office to observe users in the service environment. A set of questions should be prepared in advance. Recording or taking notes is vital for a debrief after the interviews and observations. One way to analyse the results is to build challenge cards, i.e. a list of issues that were most common among the users. The next steps would be to prioritise the challenges with stakeholders. Another way to use the findings is to create fictitious user personas that can be used during each steps of the design process.

User Persona

WHAT? A persona is a tool service designers often use. It is a fictitious characters based on real life user research.

WHY? A persona can help keep the user perspective in the service design involved throughout each step. Designing a service directed to 1-2 personas helps make sure that the inner motivations, user behaviour and specific service requirements are taken into consideration.

HOW? Creating a persona always starts with some research. Desk research might give good pointers about what kind of users to interview. Talking and getting to know real users is very important for creating a credible persona. A persona should be represented with a photo or an illustration and key information about their basic background, personality, interests and feeling towards using the service.

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Co-design workshop

WHAT? A co-design workshop is an event that invites real life users to join the design process. It is a key part of a user-centred service design project.

WHY? To create a user-centred digital service, such as the new Vero.fi, stakeholders’ opinions were considered the first priority. A workshop is a great chance to reflect on the existing ideas and concepts and build up together with users. It is also a chance to involved the real users in the designing of new concepts or a website. A workshop will increase the designers’ empathic understanding of the users’ perspective.

HOW? Usually the workshop takes around 2-3 hours, while longer ones, for a full day or two, are not uncommon. The organisers are divided into facilitators and recorders. There can be any number of user participants, but dividing into smaller groups (of 3-5 persons) with at least one facilitator and a recorder is recommended. Tasks for the workshop can be for individuals or the small group. Tasks vary from creating posters, having discussions with visual aids (such as photos), constructing prototypes etc. Usually there are a variety of design probes, such as visual materials or prototype kits, involved in the workshop.

Challenge cards

4 . 1 . R E S E A R C H M E T H O D S

WHAT? Designers often use ‘game-style’ cards to help in their design process. Some famous examples are the IDEO method cards and Aalto University’s ATLAS project cards or Persona cards.

WHY? The cards can help with brainstorming or focusing the project work. Cards can also help people be more creative and brainstorm ideas. Challenge cards specifically can help focus the discussion at the chosen problems, one by one.

HOW? Each card describes a problem that was identified through the desk and user research. The cards can be used in meetings and workshops to ask participants to prioritise or choose the most important ones. It is usually good to start by discussing each card and what see what kind of ideas, examples or questions they might raise. Taking notes and pictures of the process is very important. The end result of any prioritisation or selection can be used to move on in the design process. IDEO method cards: http://www.ideo.com/work/method-cards/ Aalto University’s ATLAS project cards : http://atlas-research.fi/

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Usability test

WHAT? Usability testing is an integral part of the web design process. It is a chance to invite representatives of important user segments to test the website.

WHY? The test can have various purposes, such as testing the navigation, finding specific content, or observing users’ impressions about specific parts of the website. Test results will guide the further development of the website.

HOW? Testing should be started early on, even with low fidelity mock-ups. A clickable prototype is always the best for an authentic user experience testing. Set up a test space in a room with a computer and a mouse. Invite the users in one by one. Prepare questions and tasks for the users. Ask them to ‘think out loud’ and describe their experience in words. Video or audio recording is recommended, or alternatively have one other person focus on note taking. Analysis of the test results and debrief with team members is vital. After that, decisions need to be made about the changes to the web design, content and navigation.

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4 . 2 . A N A LY S I S O F T H E C U R R E N T VERO.F I

This part of the report provides a comprehensive analysis of the current vero.fi, based on our desk research and user research, and the reports received from Tax Administration. The analysis is divided into two sections: the analysis based on desk research, and the analysis based on user interaction. The desk research includes our analysis of the reports and existing materials provided by the Tax Administration. Where as the analysis based on user interaction gathered materials from the interviews and discussions the team has conducted. Not surprisingly, the interviews have led to very similar results with the already existing data. The main conclusions are that the information on the page is very scattered and overlapping with a weak navigation system. This makes the information hard to find and in addition makes the overall appearance of the page messy. All in all the pages seem to have too much material and information for the user to digest easily.

Stated in a user analysis provided by Verohallinto and executed by Adage (Adage 2015), the average user of the vero.fi site is a middle-aged woman looking for infromation or online services from an individual user’s point of view. This is also why the main persona used in this research, Raija, is a woman of that age.

42 % of the users use the vero.fi site to use the online services and 72% of these users find it easy to find the service they are looking for. 38% of the users are looking for information on the website, and what is of great importance is that even though 37% felt that the information was easy to find, 36% similarly stated that the information

4.2.1. Secondary research: desk research

User analysis (based on a survey by Adage, 2015, N=344)

• 59% of users are individuals, 11% are tax experts, 10% company representatives, 8% FTA employees• 30% of users are aged 45-54 years old• 77% of users are women• 33% of users are located in the capital region, 27% in Western Finland, 21% Rest of the Southern

Finland (not capital)• 55% of users visit the website occasionally or rarely, 29% use it once a week or more often

Women IndividualsOthers Others

Left: women vs. Men (the darker is women) Right: Individuals vs Others (dark = indiv.)

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they were looking for was hard to find. 27% of the information-seekers didn’t find the information they needed at all. (Adage 2015.)In addition to what is stated above, over half of the users visit the website occasionally or rarely. This lead to a conclusion that the website needed to be designed from a rare user’s point of view. This was taken into account especially when planning and designing the new information structure and the layout of the new page.

Navigation

What comes to the problems with the navigation, an existing analysis on the current page (Verohallinto 2015c) points out that the page lacks traditional navigation menus and panels. For example there is no active breadcrumb navigation on the page at this moment. The navigation panels and systems also change throughout the site making it hard for a user to follow their path on the page. What is more, even the main page upper level navigation panel includes too many irrelevant parts when only the two main sections of the site - the individual and the company sites - would be the most important.As is visible in the prototypes, this problem was resolved by moving the individual and the company site navigation panels to be an upper level navigation panel that hides the other sections under it. In addition, in the mock-up the vero.fi -address automatically directs the user to the individual site.

Scatterness The other main problem stated in the Tax Administration’s presentation (Verohallinto 2015c) was the scatterness of the information. On the existing vero.-fi page the information is divided into information for the average user and the information for the professional user. However these two often contain very similar information and it is easy for the average user to end up in the professional information pages. The very same information can often also be found on different pages in different forms making it hard for the user to know where to look for the information. As stated above, 36% of the users find it hard to find the information they are looking for (Adage 2015).The information pages and the e-services are separated on the existing page which makes it

possible for the customer to go straight to the e-services or the forms without even reading the information on the very subject. As stated in the presentation (Verohallinto 2015c) and reassured in the workshop interviews, these two functions must be combined on the new site.In the project these problems were approached by creating a whole new information structure concept, the life events. By re-organizing the information around life events the user can easily search for what they are looking for. In addition, the professional information is removed from the main panel and moved to the second level navigation panel. The professional information is also clearly separated from the average user’s pages and in the search function the results will be arranged so that the average user doesn’t end up in the professional site.

Information blindness

Both the customer situation pages and the main page are stacked with information. The customer situation pages include large text masses of very detailed information with no clear highlighting of the very important parts making it hard for the customer to quickly skim through the pages. A similar effect can be seen on the main page, that includes a lot of unrelated information for most users making the page very messy. Also the large amount of banners and navigation panels interferes the visual layout of the site. (Verohallinto 2015c.)

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4 . 2 . A N A LY S I S O F T H E C U R R E N T V E R O . F I

4.4.2. Primary research: User Interaction

Interviews at the Kaisaniemi Tax Office

The analysis of the current vero.fi is based on our own interviews and discussions with users led to very similar results with the desk research. Interviews conducted by the team are listed below.

• Face-to-face interviews with 14 people• Interview with Kaisaniemi Tax Office staff members• Interviews with customers at the Kaisaniemi Tax Office• Interviews in the co-design workshop with 9 people

• 75-80% of customers in Kaisaniemi are foreigners or do not speak Finnish.

• Many foreigners or recent immigrants do not have an electronic identification.

• Seasonal spikes occur at the office.

• Most common reason for people to visit the Tax Office is to get a Tax Card.

• Staff is frequently encouraging people to use Vero’s online services, and even teach people to use

them.

The team visited the kaisaniemi Tax Office in June 2015 and interviewed both the staff members and the users on the usability of the vero.fi web site.

Some key information points we found out during our visit:

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Staff experience on vero.fi

• “Vero.fi has the world’s worst search engine.” “I prefer to use Google instead.”

• “The language on the website is not understandable to people.”

• “It’s a pity that Kela and Vero do not share data in real time. It makes everyone’s life more

complicated.”

• “We use around 10 different softwares to take care of the tax services for customers.”

• “We often use Vero.fi at work to find information and forms.”

• “We have no idea about the Tax Administration’s social media.”

We first interviewed the staff at Kaisaniemi Tax Office and asked them to describe their experience using Vero.fi digital services. Here are some things they mentioned:

As came out in the desk research, the variety of different platforms makes working harder not only for the users and customers but also for the employees. This will, hopefully, be taken into account in Tax Administrations in-house development when renewing and combining the platforms by GenTax later on.Also, the difficulties with the language and the search engine were visible in the employees’ daily work. If even the employees can’t find information by using the search function, how could the customers? However, the employees found it easier to find forms and information through vero.fi than their own intranet platforms. The need of

sharing information between different public sector institutions was also clearly pointed out in the discussions.An interesting point that the team paid attention to was that the employees of the Tax Office hadn’t even heard about the Tax Administration’s social media. As the team thinks that the social media is the easiest approachable side of the Tax Administration, it should absolutely be advertised to the employees, too.All in all the main findings in what the staff pointed out are very similar to the customer feedback we have studied. The search engine is a real problem and probably prevents some individual users

Interviewing staffs at Kaisaniemi Tax Office

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from efficiently using vero.fi. Also the complicated language often comes out in the user research, too. The staff has a unique inside view to the tax Administration’s customer service challenges and real user needs - the staff and their opinions should therefore be included in the redesign of Vero’s digital services.Customer interviews at the Kaisaniemi Tax OfficeAfter interviewing the staff we focused on the people in the waiting room. Kaisaniemi Tax Office is only for the individual users so none of the interviewees were corporate customers. Listed below are some main findings on the customer interviews:

Most common reason to come to the office is to get a Tax Card for following reasons:

• Customer doesn’t know it can be done online

• Customer feels insecure doing it online

• Customer doesn’t know how to do it online

• Customer doesn’t have an electronical ID

• Customer needs a paper version and doesn’t have

a printer

• Customer wants face-to-face service.

• Some quotes from the customers:

• “I don’t know what I can do online.”

• “I never take care of things online. I would not

want to give out my social security number online,

it’s not safe.”

• “I want personal face-to-face service.”

• “Oh, this is easy. I did not know.”

• “Maybe it’s just me - but I feel stupid for not

knowing how to use the online service.”

The overall feeling was that people either feel insecure using the online service or don’t know how to order a tax card online. Some customers had tried to do it but did not manage to get it right and therefore needed some assurance in the process. The form is very long, complicated, and asks a variety of questions. For the customer, it might be

hard to know what is the essential information you need to submit in the form and what you can leave out. This might make the customer feel stupid and insecure and make them come to the office to get help. The customers were also afraid of making mistakes in the online form. The Tax Card form needs to be redesigned so that it provides assurance and the users feel confident in filling it out also online. A help chat or some similar function might provide help for this.What is more, customers need to bring many documents and financial information with them in order for the customer service be able to help them. Most of the interviewed customers had this information printed out with them, meaning that they could’ve ordered the tax card online by themselves. However, often the customers didn’t understand that the tax percentage is calculated based on the salary and benefit information which the staff cannot access. Also, there are cases when even the Tax Office cannot give an official decision on a matter, and the customer needs to wait to be contacted by someone from the main Tax Office. This is, for example, when a person has recently retired. Some of these problems, for example the need for an electronical ID or the retirement question, cannot at this point be solved by the online services.


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“I want personal face-to-face service.”

“Maybe it’s just me - I feel stupid for not knowing how to use the online service.”

“I don’t know what I can do online.”

“Oh, this is easy. I did not know.”

“I never take care of things online. I would not want to give out my social security number online, it’s not safe.

Interviewing users at Kaisaniemi Tax Office39


4.2.3. Problem definition

Based on research the team found out that there are two ways of looking at the current problem.

First, seeing through the customers’ eyes, the team found out three main problems, that actually are similar and related to the technical problems:

1. First, users cannot find information relevant to them and even when they find it, it is not easy for them to understand the tax language and terminology.

2. Secondly, they have fear and anxiety about taxes and using e-services.

3. Third, customers are not at the center of the

current website strategy.

Especially the last point is related to the conflict between collecting taxes with as low costs as possible and serving customers as well as possible. That may imply that the services are not really designed to support people’s daily lives and needs.

Secondly, in technical views it was clear that there were issues with the navigation and information

architecture. Furthermore, the information was overloaded and delivered at a whole to customers, which made the appearance of the website quite messy. Lastly, the technical features on the websites such as search engine and e-services were outdated and unorganized.

When considering both ways of looking at the problems, the team decided to focus on the latter views, which covers technical problems but at the same time reflects the empathy towards users.

A. Users cannot find information relevant to them.B. Users cannot understand the language and terminology

A. Users have fear and anxiety about taxes and using e-services

A. Verohallinto is struggling to navigate between two objectives: ‘Collecting taxes’ and ‘Customer service’B. User needs are not a core focus in the serviceC. Services are not designed to support people’s daily lives

A. Navigation & Information architecture

A. Messy look and information overload

A. Outdated technical solutions, such as search engine & e-services

Problem Definition of current Vero.fi

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Current Vero.fi homepage

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4 . 3 . U S E R P E R S O N A

Personas what we created based on our initial user research are illustrating four representative user groups from teenagers to the late 50’s. Below Two-by-Two graph represents the each persona’s frequency of use and age, and the representative personas have their own contexts, and stories. Personas what we created based on our researches was used for communication with tax administration to help them understand users’ perspective, as well as guiding our project to user-centeredness. The created personas were used to be dealt with in customer journey, service blueprint and stories.

Insecure on digital services and taxes

Fear

Positive perception

Raija

Digi-native and tax master

User segement in Verohallinto

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Raija Persona, 58

Raija’s story

Check out Raija’s story on Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmRwX-kj0z4https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUmfpvn6Xl8

Raija is a career civil servant working at the municipality administration. She has accumulated wealth from her stable and long term work position. Her adult daughters and elderly parents are central in her life. Raija takes care of her elderly parent’s finances and healthcare. She enjoys occasionally travelling to Southern Europe with her daughters. The Finnish summer she spends at her summer house in central Finland. Working full time, having an active social life and taking care of parents, make Raija quite busy and she prefers taking care of taxes and other finances online. Raija prefers to take care of her finances and taxes efficiently but accurately and always on time. Her daughters and friends often come to her for advice on taxes.

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Background

• Living in Tampere for the past 30 years.• Divorced with 2 adult daughters.• Takes care of her elderly parents (household,

finances, healthcare)• Employed at a local municipality

administration since 1991. • Uses computers and Internet at her workplace,

though she feels somewhat insecure about learning new IT skills. She is confident using programmes and carrying out tasks on computers when they are familiar to her.

• Believes that taxes are essential for the society. She is keen to be an active and contributing part of the society.

Context for using services

• Occasional user of Vero services (around 10 times a year).

• Initially, she struggled using digital services for taxes. These days, she is always paying her bills online and prefers to use e-services for tax related issues as well.

• Feels quite comfortable using Vero.fi, but she is slightly worried about making mistakes with numbers or not understanding the digital platform. She is especially hesitant using new e-services, but prefers to try rather than call or visit customer services. She prefers to search for information independetly on Vero.fi and call customer service only as a last option.

• Before using Vero.fi e-services, she used to visit the tax office to get her tax related paper work done.

• When calling Vero customer services, it is mostly to confirm information she has found online, or to consult on a specific case that she found no answers online.

• Past use scenarios: tax card / tax percentage, household deductions for her and her parents, information search about taxes when selling a house.

Goals : Uses Vero.fi around 10 times a year

• E-services: - Tax card - Deductions - Takes care of elderly parents’ taxes as well• Information search

Motivation

• Feels that Vero e-services enable her to save time.

• Her daughter and friends often ask her for tax related advice. She appreciates this and proactively searches for information.

• Keen to save money and manage her finances in an efficient way. She wants to leave a sizeable inheritance for her two daughters.

Technology

• Internet: 6/10• Mobile (Smart): 4/10, She uses a smartphone

but mostly for email, social media and news. She is not familiar with smartphone applications.

• Mobile (Phone call, text message): 8/10 (Uses Whatsapp to message with daughters, frequently call with parents)

Likes

• Hobbies: nordic walking, small repair and gardening work at summer house, cooking for family and friends, walking her dog, socialising with her daughters, friends and family.

• She feels that Vero e-services are convenient as she has used them for several years.

Dislikes

• She gets frustrated when she cannot find the information she is looking for, or cannot figure out how to use an e-service function.

• Prefers not to visit tax office as she is not keen on queuing.

Key values

• Friends, family, correct and accurate information, trust and equality, independent and active part of society.

“The word ‘tax’ has certain connotations. One is scared of it. It definitely is not something easy to do.

It is about survival. Maybe it is not good or bad.”

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4 . 4 . C O - D E S I G N WO R K S H O P

Co-design workshop was held 15th of July with 9 participants and 4 facilitators to validate our design ideas and to co-create key web pages with users. We invited them throughout our social networking connections such as Twitter and Facebook. Participants had different backgrounds including ITP students, a service designer, and users of Verohallinto. Our team organized nice food and coffee with musics that excites the atmosphere more. During around 2 hours, participants and facilitators had created interesting insights about Vero services and ideas together, and the result was beneficial to move our initial ideas to the more practical level of web service design.

1. Confirmation of our key concepts: life events, profile page / login

One of our Co-Design workshop was aiming for affirming our key concept ideas; Life events, personalized profile page after logging into Vero’s system.

2. Understanding user perspective

One of the main purposes for the workshop was wearing users’ shoes and understanding their perspectives more deeply. As understanding users’ mind, contexts, and struggles in different ways are very crucial points of design research processes, our team also considered the workshop as an opportunity to look at users more closely, and seeing the tax world through their glasses.

3. Co-designing Home Page and Profile Page

We brought a Co-Designing phrase with users into the workshop as well, since we believe that users are creative and insightful. Participants freely

created their optimal vero webpages with others while discussing about problems on current vero.fi’s User Interfaces and experiences, as well as anticipated design elements on our concept such as data visualization and information structures. 4. Fear

We knew from previous user interviews that people have fear and anxiety towards the Verohallinto, its services and especially the digital services. We had the chance to develop into this more and discover what are the elements inside of it.

4.4.1. The purposes of the Co-Design workshop

Co-design workshop in Service factory, Aalto University

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4.4.2. Tasks for the workshop

1. Personas and Life events

We asked them to create their own life events in general, and then moved to the different age groups

that have distinguished tax issues depending on their ages. Participants assumed which life events are

mostly influential for different age groups, for example from 40 to 55, taking care about their old parents, divorce, business trips, and etc., can be important.

2. Evaluation of current Vero.fi, and creating new main page

Evaluating current Vero’s web services was aiming for evoking users’ issues on Vero again, and freely

discussing about what would be the key elements they want to use for the future. These evaluation phrase

helped to move next level creating new Homepage, and Tax Card page.

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2. Evaluation of current Vero.fi, and creating new main page

Evaluating current Vero’s web services was aiming for evoking users’ issues on Vero again, and freely

discussing about what would be the key elements they want to use for the future. These evaluation phrase

helped to move next level creating new Homepage, and Tax Card page.

3. My page for Vero.fi

Lastly, in a more practical level, participants were encouraged to examine Mydata, and My Page

concepts, and visualize it based on their desire. People created insightful visualizations through papers,

pens, and scissors, which are simple, but powerful to create quick and dirty prototypes. The results were

rearranged by visual designers after the workshop in more optimized ways.

Co-design workshop in Service factory, Aalto University

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4.4.3. The result of Co-Design Workshop

The results from the workshop were insightful and fruitable. It was enough to validate our concept ideas, because the general opinions from participants came up with were highly similar ideas to our own we have developed during this project.

Most of participants indicated the unstructured information hierarchy, overwhelming amount of information, and consuming time to understand the contents as whole. This massive information makes users feel frustrated and distant while using Vero’s system. Users wondered what are the important contents they should read based on their needs. Throughout these opinions, we could rearrange a new information structure that has simple, and understandable contents what users should take care about during their tax process while hiding less relevant information under the crucial things.

Our team discussed and noticed regarding users’ uncertainty and fear many times. While taking tax processes, users easily feel unsure whether they are doing in right way or not, or sometimes they did not even know what the keyword they should search to find out the relevant information. Fear from making mistakes that could result in big costs or failure was also a factor making users feel worried using Vero’s digital tax services. It brings fears and frustration on Verohallinto as well, so our team took account this issue in our design output. Showing clear processes where they are standing, and what they should do for the next step in visual way was suggested as an solution during the workshop. In addition, when users are looking for specific information, other relevant information they could consider can be shown up on the same page that satisfies users’ concerns.

During the workshop, users suggested ‘My pages’ and home page login function in Verohallinto, which were similar ideas what we brought to the workshop. It means that there are needs for the personalized service for individual customers that they would see their accumulated tax data on the top of the basic tax information. The needs includes how their tax money is spent and what different taxes are included in the tax collection as well.

• From massiveness to simplicity

• Uncertainty and Fear

• Personalized Service

“I want to delete all buttons and texts here, and just put two buttons ‘individual & companies.”

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Co-design workshop in Service factory, Aalto University49

D E S I G N O U T C O M E S

5.1 Design principles5.2 Design concepts5.2.1. Life events5.2.2. My Tax5 .3. Design outcomes5.3.1. Sitemap5.3.2. Prototypes5.3.3. Design features

Providing personalized digital services to users are getting more popularities in private sector, as well as in public organizations. Based on our research findings mentioned above, we introduce two main design concepts: Life events for data categorizing method and My Tax for providing personalized customer-own information and services.

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5 . 1 . D E S I G N PRINCIPLES

Based on initial interviews with customers, Verohallinto representatives, and Tax Office staffs, Team Doyle has come up with different design principles since the beginning of the project. Those principles have been confirmed by further interviews and research conducted, and guided us throughout the project toward our goals. Here are the principles:

Accessibility Approachability

Simplicity InformationArchitecture

USER-CENTERED

Five design principles

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“Simplification = Prioritization”

Simplicity

Information architecture

Information architecture

Approachability

User as center

Simple design is not just a trend but an innovation in delivering contents in the most efficient way to customers. Anyone, anywhere people keep saying that simplicity is the best, that we should keep it simple. It sounds simple but tax in nature is complicated and large in amount. What we interpret simplification is prioritization. We only focus on what features and information needed the most at each moment. We set out different questions for ourselves such as what the most important when they just enter the page are, what they want the most at their information seeking process, and what we can help them the most. Further more, with load of information, we tends to organise it relevantly with the process of looking information by the next principle: Information architecture.

Tax information is complicated itself. Due to that fact, without a clear categorization, users are easy to get lost or confused reading and understanding contents. Furthermore, the information should be larger when customers go deeper to the issue to prevent the overwhelming feelings . With the belief that information should be categorized by the way users looking for information related to themselves, we conducted the design concept: life events as a method to organize contents in more relevant to users and effective for search engine. More detailed information about life-event design concept will be introduced in later part.

Tax information is complicated itself. Due to that fact, without a clear categorization, users are easy to get lost or confused reading and understanding contents. Furthermore, the information should be larger when customers go deeper to the issue to prevent the overwhelming feelings . With the belief that information should be categorized by the way users looking for information related to themselves, we conducted the design concept: life events as a method to organize contents in more relevant to users and effective for search engine. More detailed

information about life-event design concept will be introduced in later part.

We are all moving to a digital future when the online world is connected closely to the offline one. By making the design more approachable, Vero brand image can become more friendly and users will have better perspectives toward Verohallinto. Furthermore, to drive customers to use the website instead of other service channels, the website should be the most approachable.

Finally, how to link all 4 principles at once, it is user-centered principle. this should always be a starting point. Creating user-centred services makes services most effective as well. Because they are the ones who use those services at the end.

53

5 . 1 . D E S I G N CONCEPTS

5.2.1. Life Events

Providing personalized digital services to users are getting more popularities in private sector, as well as in public organizations. Based on our research findings mentioned above, we introduce two main design concepts: Life events for data categorizing method and My Tax for providing personalized customer-own information and services.

Studying Working Leaving Finland Busi

ness

and

Inve

stm

ent

Re

tiring

Inheritance / Gift

Having a Baby Marriage / Divorce House

A

rrivin

g to

Fin

land

Life Events

54

“Not every Finn wants to be an expert in tax and study about taxes, however we want to master

our taxation and fulfill our responsibilities.”

So when they need to handle taxation? Taxation is normally repetitive, therefore, people do not normally look for tax information everyday. People normally look for information when there is something new in their lives which may change their taxation and they need to update their knowledge to be able to fulfill the responsibilities. For example, when customers buy a new house, they need to pay for their transfer tax when making an acquisition. Without any specific needs for any chance in their lives, customers often do not use Vero website.

By organizing information around people’s lives, we feed information right when they need it. They can easily relate themselves to life events which cause changes in taxation. Then they can feel secured because all taxation issues related to life changes which are new to them have been dealt with as one.

Furthermore, such life events are really common for everyone such as study, work, retirement or house purchase. By using this life event concept, Verohallinto can provide tailored information with one information architecture system only.

Our design concepts are proved as a concrete and efficient concept by the fact that KaPa is also trying to use this concept to produce metadata and ontology based on relevant life stages. This way of organizing information will be then used in back-end of the new suomi.fi and eventually implemented in all public services in Finland. Furthermore, this approach is a response to the EU Directive on common public services. Information about public services should be recorded in the a harmonized way which can be accessed by users in different country and by the computer (Ala-Harja 2015). Search engine will be considerably more efficient by such metadata and categorization method. Additionally, life-event concept has been recommended and used by different advanced EU countries (Lörincz et al., 2012).

To the next level, by knowing what customers are doing in one life event, the system can suggest suitable information and services for it and for the past or coming life events. By following this categorization method, Vero can improve considerably its search engine as well as its artificial-intelligence service.

- Interviewee, co-design workshop

5.2.2. My Tax

While life events concept is a way of organizing information, my tax is way of delivering personalized tax information and services in a tailored ways and as a one stop shop for every tax related issue for one’s life.

My tax provides tax insights of people taxation issues. So they can see how tax changes after their life changes due to life events. Furthermore, my tax provides secured and easy way of applying and managing e-services, communicating with tax officials and master their taxation efficiently. Further explanation of this concept will be included in prototype demonstration.

55


In this section, the website outcomes will be demonstrated. First, the sitemap provides the overview of information & service structure and an initial navigation system . Second, we will show the wireframes conducted before showing our final design which is a clickable prototype. Finally in this section, the detailed explanation of different design features in the prototype will be explained.

The major structure now is now divided clearly into Individuals, Organizations and Tax Professionals. This change will prevent individuals from reading information for tax professionals which are too academic and complicated for common users. By doing so, the main page will look more clear and “to the points”.

Information about taxation and services related to

different issues are organized around life events as explained in design concepts.

The long list of services will be grouped as Income Tax related services, Property related services and Household related services. Thanks to that, if users already have experiences of doing any specific service, they can find it easier and right from the front page.

5.3.1 Sitemap

- Household Deduction

- Household Employer Announcement

- Constructrion Work Reports

Life events Services My tax

Studying

Leaving Finland

Arriving to Finland

House

Marriage / Divorce

Having a child

Retiring

Inheritance / Gift

Working

Business and Investment

Income tax related

Property related

Household related

- Periodic tax return

- Tax Return

- Tax Card

- Reap Property Announcement

- Forest Owner Tax Return

- Tax Transfer Notice

Pro�le

Messages and Alerts

My Life Events

My Tax Information

Calendar

Individuals Organisations Tax professionals

56

5.3.2 ProtypesThe wireframes were conducted after the co-design workshop. The initial purpose was to build the base for contents and designs features. We also used it as a test version for our client - Verohallinto.

Footer area Footer area Footer area Footer area

Tekstiversio Suomeksi På svenska In Englsih A- A+ Kirjaudu sisään

Life events Services

INDIVIDUALS ORGANISATIONS TAX PROFESSIONALS

About Tax adminstration

What are you looking for?

Contact

Feedback

Social Network

Log in

Most popular

Life events

Studying

Working

Going abroad

House

Marriage / Divorce

Having a child

Investment

Inheritance / Gift

Retirement

Death

Tax return

57



Tekstiversio Suomeksi På svenska In Englsih A- A+ Kirjaudu sisään

Services



Life events

Individual - Life events - House

Studying

Working

Going abroad

House

Marriage / Divorce

Having a child

Investment

Inheritance / Gift

Retirement

Death

First-time homebuyers do not have to pay transfer tax if a set of requirements is met. The tax definitions of 'first-time homebuyer' and the 'first dwelling' being purchased are discussed on this page.

The type of dwelling you buy as a first-time homebuyer may be a unit in a housing company or a unit of real estate.

First-time homebuyers do not have to pay transfer tax if all of the following conditions are fulfilled: - Your ownership interest is going to be at least 50 percent. - You are at least 18, and no more than 39 years old on the date when you sign the contract. - You buy the place to start living in it yourself, and you move in before six months have elapsed of the date when you signed the contract. - You have not been a homeowner previously, i.e. you have never had a 50-percent ownership of a dwelling unit or a house.

Send the Transfer tax form to the Tax AdministrationAlthough transfer tax does not have to be paid, you must still deliver the completed tax return form to a tax office if you have bought shares in a housing company.You can send the completed form by post or deliver it to a tax office. Enclose a photocopy of the contract of purchase.The tax office will authorise your transfer tax return form with an official stamp, after which you can deliver it to the superin-tendent of the housing company (isännöitsijä; disponent), or to the board of the housing company. They will then register you as the holder of title.

Buying a home through an estate agentIf you engaged the services of an estate agent, the agent is responsible for sending the completed form to the Tax Administra-tion.

Buying a unit of real estateIf what you buy as a first-time homebuyer is a single-family house regarded as an independent unit of real estate, you must ask the Tax Administration to provide a statement confirming that you have not owned a residence before. You can ask for the statement by telephone, and it is delivered to your home address by post.

Statements are not provided until your purchase contract is complete. Bring along the statement when you visit the office of the National Land Survey (maanmittauslaitos.fi) for having the ownership rights registered.

Life events

Buying a first house

Buying an apartment

Selling house

Loan interest

Transfer tax form

Apply

(Example)If what you buy as a first-time homebuyer is a single-family house regarded as an

independent unit of real estate, you must ask the Tax Administration to provide a statement

confirming that you have not owned a residence before. You can ask for the statement by

telephone, and it is delivered to your home address by post.

Contact

Feedback

The �rst residence l The �rst real estate

Purchase 2 monthsAcquire

ownership

Deadline to submit transfer tax form

Description of each process

Buying a first house

58

Tekstiversio Suomeksi På svenska In Englsih A- A+ Jaeyong Lee


E-Services My Vero My profile



What are you looking for?

Contact

Feedback

Your tax information

Your Life Events

Messages and Alerts

Tax calendar

By date By topic

August October November

E-Services

Most popular

My last used

INCOME TAX RATE

€30,000 24%Read more

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

.......................

.......................

.......................

More E-services

Studying

icon icon

iconiconiconiconiconicon

59


Tekstiversio Suomeksi På svenska In Englsih A- A+ Jaeyong Lee


E-Services My Vero My profile



Contact

Feedback

Summary of the year

Detailed information

2015

Income Tax rate

€30,000 24%Tax paid

€6,300

Jaeyong LeeSocial security number: 010886-XXXXMobile: +358 46 577 XXXXAddress: Vaino Aurien Katu 1N 046, 00560Email: [email protected] account: 3830XXXX

Go to chart See more See more

Average monthly

Estimated annual

€3,000

€36,000

Tax cardEdit

Year Month

Edit

Income Tax paid Deduction Pension Tax return

2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015

37%

21%

42%

Income Tax paid Rate

Capital income

Others

Salary €30,000 €2,000 24%

€20,000 €1,000 18%

€10,000 €500 19.5%

2015

New job

Rent income


60

Based on great feedbacks received from a prototype-test meeting with the clients, the final clickable prototype were conducted. There were not many significant changes in structure between the wireframe and the final prototype. What were added are mostly features, colors and some minor change in navigation structure.

Here are some results from the test:

• There should be a banner to promote significant deadlines, events, or new functions. • Social media should be in the main page but it is not as important as other features• The life events concepts were confirmed as a good method for information architecture• There should be less buttons • They want bigger fonts and clearer alerts

61


5.3.3 Design features

In this part, different design features will be explain. Please see the features from the picture with numbers. Each feature will be explained according to its number.

1

2

3

4 Because delivering information is the main purpose of the website, there-fore, we focus on several features that enables and ease the information seeking process.

1

2

3

4

Navigation structure

Most popular section

Search bar

Life events circle

62

2

5

6

4

3

5

6

Horizontal navigation path

Vertical navigation section

Positioning where they are in the website is always a problem in current website, to solve it, in addition to main naviga-tion structure, we add also the horizontal navigation path and vertical navigation section.

7

7

To provide a better way to understand tax related contents, we provide an illustrated process chart to help users to know a big picture of the process and understand what they need to do and where they are in the process

Step by step process chart

63

8

5

E-service under taxation information

Under any taxation content, there will be related e-service so that users can use what they just read about right away

After logging into MyTax, users can see their own basic information which is automatically updated by the information exchange system between di�erent public agencies. In MyTax, the vertical navigation section will be changed to support MyTax funtions.

58

9

9 Customer services and feedbacks

There is a �oating section on the right which always follow users. By clicking that �oating section, they can connect to customer services or give feedbacks.

10

11 Basic information

11

10 MyTAX vertical navigation

64

8

Messages is a channel that helps more interactive communication with Verohallinto. Verohallinto could utilize it for sending important messages for individual users, and people can react through the message. In addition, the system provide personalized alerts for individuals that encourage users checking their tax issues more actively and considering upcoming issues what they would encounter.

13 E-services board

12 Message and Alerts

12 13

This board is used to let users know what their last used services are and what the popular ones are

14

13 My Life Events

This features provide basic tax related information about what did and is happening around one’s life. The coming life events are also forcasted.

14

65

15 Calendar

Tax calendar indicates important tax days for individual users. For example, users easily can check the start day of tax return, and applying for household deduction. The schedules can be optimized based on information what individuals provided to Verohallinto, which is bene�cial to people who want to get more customized services. By doing so, people do not need to worry about forgetting their important tax dates, and reacting on that accurately.

16 Summary of year

Summary of year shows brief of users’ tax rate, the amount of tax paid, and salary. In a glance, users can see the clear numbers from each section. When they clicks it, the section interactively moves and illustrate slightly deeper level of information like monthly and yearly salary. After that, the system guides users going tax related information naturally. Numbers are button to go more detailed analysis, so users can easily follow the steps to get the speci�c data accumulation.

16

15

66

18 Tax information breakdown

Tax related information showing changes of users’ tax state, and precise percentages with numbers based on yearly and monthly information is consisted with income, tax paid, deduction, pension, and tax return. For each section, line graph shows the changes of an user’s tax situations with comprehensive data.

17

17

18

Tax related information monthly or yearly

67

66 . I M P L E M E N TAT I O N

6.1 Integration with suomi.fi6.2 Opportunities and challenges with implementation6.3 Roadmap to implementation

------

This chapter has a focus on implementation of the ideas and concepts proposed in this document. The first section is about integration with suomi.fi. The second part looks at the challenges with Verohallinto’s own ICT strategy and vision 2020. The final part of this chapter provides some practical ideas for an implementation roadmap. Implementation is discussed to some extent also in the Chapter 8: Recommendation.

69

I N T E G R AT I O N W I T H S U O M I . F I

How can Verohallinto get on board with the new suomi.fi?

1. Increase communication about suomi.fi and KaPA to all relevant Vero staff: IT Unit, Communication Unit and Management

• Build a communication channel between IT people and Communications people working on KaPA.

2. Build a roadmap for integration. While there is no ready-made integration plan available from KaPA, this could be a chance for Vero to become a pioneer and build such an integration plan.

3. Consult IT specialists on data connections:

• X-road: needs a Secure Server (SS) for the connection

• In practice, what other technical IT solutions are needed from Verohallinto’s behalf?

4. Get involved in KaPA’s other functionalities:

• Mailbox: Citizen mailbox fully functional during 2016

• Profile: How ‘difficult’ would it be to allow some tax details into the suomi.fi profile? For example tax percentage?

• E-identification: is there a way to allow one sign-in for all Vero e-services through this?

Key people to set up meetings with:

• Maria Nikkilä and Marjukka Ala-Harja from Ministry of Finance, KaPA Team. Discuss Verohallinto’s overall involvement.

• Jani Ruuskanen, Population Registry. Discuss practical issues related to suomi.fi.

• Marko Latvanen or Mari Kervinen, Population Registry. Discuss life events and the PTV (metadata and service repository).

• Aleksi Kopponen, Ministry of Finance, Digitalisation Team. Discuss national level digitalisation strategy and Verohallinto’s pioneering work. Gain an understanding and share how Vero’s digital services fit into the larger context.

The national service architecture KaPA and suomi.fi were introduced in Part 3 of this report. This section looks at the practical implementation and benefits of the suomi.fi integration. The section after this one will provide critical analysis on the intersection of suomi.fi and Verohallinto’s own IT programme GenTax.

Beta.suomi.fi – schedule:

• It is here by the end of 2015!

• New service guides and other content implemented in the next 2 years.

• Businesses and organisations will be added to the new suomi.fi after the citizen views are ready.

Useful links on KaPA/suomi.fi:

http://esuomi.fi/palveluvayla/ http://www.palveluvayla.fi http://www.avoindata.fi

Most recent KaPA document: https://www.lausuntopalvelu.fi/FI/Proposal/ DownloadProposalAttachment?attachmentId =867

70

Through a standardised eID, Verohallinto would be able to move the majority of its communication to digital:

• Tax related documents and even decisions could be sent to customers digitally, automatically and in real time.

• Documents could be signed digitally, saving a lot of time for both parties.

• Secure messaging between customers and the Tax Administration would be possible.

• Vero could send (personalised) reminders to customers.

• Each person could login to an online service with relevant and personalised information and services.

With the national X-road, Verohallinto could transform its digital services by:

• Enabling assigning roles and authorisation to different people when relevant, for example a guardian or a company employee.

• Sharing data between organisations, securely and with appropriate privacy and authorisation controls. For example real time tax information would be directly available for Kela.

• There would be no more need for customers to submit the same information twice or to different public sector organisations. Forms would be automatically filled with one’s information (received through the X-road from different databases and registries, shared

Participating in the PSDR (Palvelutietovaranto, PTV), Verohallinto could:

• Reach the right people with the right information, even across borders.

• Build a Vero.fi search engine that provides relevant results.

• Guide the customers to other public services related to the specific life event. For example, buying a house includes changing one’s address, paying the transfer tax, notifying your housing company, applying for housing benefits etc. This way Verohallinto can support its customers in a holistic way and create more customer satisfaction.

• Similarly to the above, other public organisations can also guide customers to the tax services when this is relevant.

• The process of creating the metadata will provide an opportunity for Verohallinto to review its service portfolio and reorganise it if problems are discovered. Having a clear service portfolio would help Verohallinto better communicate with its customers and other stakeholders.

Suomi.fi and KaPA benefits for Verohallinto

eID

X-roadbetween organisations who have the correct authorisation).

PTV71

Organisational challenges for integration with suomi.fi

Vero’s involvement in KaPA is spread across the organisation. Technical things, such as electronic identification and data exchange X-Road are dealt with at the IT unit (Tietohallintoyksikkö), while the user experience and content is often given to the communications unit (Viestintäyksikkö). In a big organisation such as Verohallinto, these units might not meet as much as they ideally should. It soon became evident to this project, that many of the new concepts developed for Vero.fi cannot be implemented unless the IT unit provides its technical expertise. Kyhäräinen was able to explain some of the challenges one might face in implementing the new vero.fi.

Vero is renewing its motor

All of tax services are enabled by modern technology, and more specifically IT architecture. This includes databases, software and hardware, and a huge amount of code and IT components. All the IT architecture Vero currently has been built over the past 20-30 decades. This means there are around 70 different software, countless databases and a fragmented structure.

The modern needs for IT and especially web-based

services have pushed Vero to consider change. Quite a few years ago, Vero decided to change their ‘motor’ (i.e. all the IT components) and basically replace the fragmented software base with one single software package. After the procurement (and a lengthy legal battle with IBM), Vero chose an American software provider’s product called GenTax as the new ‘motor’.

Migration to a new system takes time

While the GenTax itself is a ready-to-use programme, it takes many years to migrate all the data and services onto it. Kyhäräinen said that they start migrating the smaller services first, in order to keep things running for major services in case of problems. Verohallinto’s utmost important duty is to collect taxes, and that can never stop.

The migration to GenTax starts now and the first to go is inheritance and gift database. Unfortunately the last one to be migrated is the big services such as Tax Card and Tax Return. The migration will be finished by 2019. A lot to be done in 4 years. But does this mean that the new vero.fi will have to wait for most of its functionalities until 2019?

Vero ICT strategy, GenTax, KaPA and vision 2020

The following chapter will discuss Verohallinto’s ICT strategy, especially in relation to their new backend solution ‘GenTax’ and the national service architecture (KaPA). Reflections on the implementation of new vero.fi concepts are also discussed. The information here is based on discussions with several staff members at Verohallinto and the Ministry of Finance. Main source of information was Jukka Kyhäräinen from Verohallinto’s IT Unit.

This is an adapted version of a blog post published 21 August 2015 on Team Doyle’s blog ‘Vero Digital Future’. URL link to original post: http://verodigitalfuture.tumblr.com/post/127234931835/it-strategies-vision-2020-and-implementing-new

OPPORTUNITIES AND CHALLENGES WITH IMPLEMENTATION

Tietovirta yksikkö

Tietohallinto

yksikköViestintä

yksikkö

Veroservices

The motor: IT architecture

72

What can be done before 2019?

These days, waiting for fours years to get a modern web service is not really an option. Vero’s customers will want changes before that. Some things need to be developed while Vero is focusing on the migration to GenTax.

National service architecture (KaPA) is launching its beta.suomi.fi platform this year. Many of the functionalities we designed for the new vero.fi will be included in the new suomi.fi this year and next year. So, is there a chance to benefit from these tools that are available almost right away? Team Doyle thinks so. And Jukka told me about Vero’s current plans for suomi.fi involvement.

What will the new suomi.fi enable by 2019?

In 2017 Vero envisions adoption the KaPA mailbox. This will enable sending PDF documents to Vero customers (though only one way). The eMail can be reminders and official documents. This is already huge, says Kyhäräinen. Due to the fact that Vero sends 10 million paper letters each year (Tax Cards, Tax Return and Property Tax). Switching to electronic would be a massive saving for the organisation. The citizen mailbox will actually be launched already in late 2015-early-2016.

Most of the other functionalities are currently not in Vero’s adoption plan. The general feeling is that GenTax needs to happen before new things can be done. It does make sense, because building on top of the old software (bound to die in 2019) seems a waste of money. But Vero cannot wait so long.

Vero data is one of the most wanted among citizens, according to open data discussion platforms. Citizens want to be able to check and edit their tax data, including their historical tax data, NOW. People want to see their current and past tax decisions, deductions and other data online. They want the information as data that can be analysed and even put into useful graphs and visualisations. And the new vero.fi MyTax function is built solely on the premise that this data exchange connection would be built.

Vero cannot afford to postpone MyTax to 2020. Nor can they afford to miss the suomi.fi train. And perhaps there is a way to use the new suomi.fi functions as stepping-stones to the vision 2020. Perhaps there is a financially sustainable option to build the X Road connections to the biggest databases. Perhaps there is an option to get involved in the new suomi.fi and reap the benefits? This requires that Vero IT unit and Communications unit have a serious talk about what can be done before 2019 in order to have a new vero.fi sooner than in 4 years, and better yet, take some experts from KaPA to join the discussion. Is there some money that could be budgeted towards this?

Do we need a compromise between GenTax and suomi.fi?

Kyhäräinen said that all the IT people at Verohallinto are ‘booked’ to work on the GenTax migration for the next 4 years. They do not have time to build connections to the new suomi.fi. In other words, the eggs are now in one basket. And there seems to be a 4 year stagnation period ahead. Vero worked (keeps working) so hard to get GenTax, and it is widely seen as the silver bullet to all of its challenges. In many ways it is. But in 4 years.

NewMyVERO

New

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One important thing in the GenTax conversation largely neglected is that no one is talking about the user experience of the GenTax/Vero2020. Having an effective motor is nothing if there is no user interface. And making one takes time and effort. Surely that needs to start now and not later? Kyhäräinen responded, that indeed Verohallinto decided this summer that such user interface planning will start right away. IT

unit and Communications unit are working together on this. Some initial ideas were produced by Saku Airosmaa and a graphic designer from Comms this Spring. But now Marko Saastamoinen from IT unit has been assigned to lead the user interface planning. The questions is: have they considered implementing a UI/UX similar to the new suomi.fi?

In essence, GenTax includes many of the functionalities the new suomi.fi also has. Obviously for such an important duty as tax collection, Vero is right to build their own software (vs. waiting for a national one that might not be exactly what they want and need).

Yet, Team Doyle asked Kyhäräinen a scary question. Not sure if anyone in Finland has yet dared to ask it? Will

there be a time, in some years (but not too far out) that suomi.fi will take over all web based services of the government sector? In essence, will what happened in UK (with GOV.UK), happen in Finland? Will vero.fi one day seize to exist and all tax related content and services are driven under suomi.fi? It makes sense that all public sector services would be under one roof. There is no such thing as ‘Tax Raija’ but just Raija dealing with public services when they relate to her life, such as paying taxes, planning for retirement, booking to see a doctor. It would make sense to take care of all these things under one (digital) roof. That is probably what KaPA and suomi.fi people are secretly thinking.

In conclusion, there cannot be a compromise between GenTax and suomi.fi - the people of Finland and Verohallinto, need both of them.

User interface,

UX/UI

Motor,IT solutions,

GenTax

Key take-aways:1. Rethink the collaboration model for the IT Unit and Communications

Unit in order to harmonise and move towards shared capabilities.

2. Work together with GenTax team on the migration schedule and enable data connections to X-Road as the new GenTax system becomes live at each data set.

3. Build a roadmap for integration with suomi.fi for the period of 2015-2020.

4. Build a plan for integration between GenTax and suomi.fi / KaPA.

5. Prepare for a future when all citizen taxation information and e-services are moved to a unified government platform. Build a series of future scenarios on what this would mean for Verohallinto’s digital services.

74

Key points about implementation:1. Ready take-away: ‘Life events’ information library can be adopted immediately.

• Tax professionals need to go through content and rewrite according to template.

• Build visualisations such as infographics and videos for each important topic.

• Focus on simplifying the language in order to decrease fear and anxiety of users.

2. User-testing with a variety of customer segments needed for final brush-up. Use the clickable prototype!

3. MyTax is more problematic

• involves new ICT solutions

• need for a compromise? Vision 2020 or get in bed with suomi.fi

• e-service revamp: Valmis hanke, Gentax: renewing the engine, i.e. the backend of all Vero operations.

Key milestones for the roadmap, vision 2020

Vero’s plans now:

• New vero.fi building starts Autumn 2015 (Solita involved)

• Migration to GenTax starts 2016 (ends 2019)

• 2015- GenTax UI starts

• 2017: one-way messaging with customers (PDFs) (suomi.fi enabled)

• 2019-2020: Fully functional GenTax

Team Doyle suggests:

• 2015: Implement ‘life events’ to Vero.fi

• 2015-2016: (Use Solita for) Build up MyTax and e-services/GenTax part of the website.

• 2015: Build a 3-year roadmap for suomi.fi integration

• 2015 - : Integrate GenTax UI team with vero.fi team

• 2016: introduce limited MyTax with a small number of customers: MailBox, Calendar, Limited Profile (suomi.fi enabled)

R O A D M A P TO I M P L E M E N TAT I O N

75

77 . C O N C L U S I O N S

All in all, the new vero.fi including the new design concepts and the idea of integrating to suomi.fi has many benefits to both Raija and the Finnish Tax Administration itself.

The concept of life events and MyTax make Raija understand better how the taxes connect to her important life events and are around her everyday life. This makes it possible for her to better master her taxes - and better fulfill her responsibilities and minimize the tax gap on her part.

Furthermore, MyTax provides her all the tools needed to manage her finances and taxes, and even provides services that the call center and tax offices may never be able to provide. MyTax is like a personal tax advisor to Raija, which makes her feel no need to actually visit the office or call the center for advice. This, on the other hand, helps the Tax Administration to reduce the personnel costs as the pressure to the traditional customer service channels decreases.

The customized service will make Raija and other users feel more content when doing her taxes, her perception towards the Tax Administration will change for better and she will eventually feel like tax Administration is her partner in taxation - she will no longer be afraid of the scary tax bear.

What the concepts of new vero.fi offer for Tax Administration is the solution to its two conflicting main objectives of reducing tax gap and cutting costs of operations, but at the same time offering better proactive customer service. MyTax and Life Events help the Tax Administration to adopt the user centered approach to new vero.fi and its service channels.

As described above, the new vero.fi will lead to more content customers that then again leads to people understanding taxes better and using the online service by default.

All this will, in turn, serve for the main goal of Tax Administration: receiving the right tax at the right time.

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8 8 . R E C O M M E N D AT I O N S

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R E C O M M E N D AT I O N S

Top 3 medium/longterm ideas:1. Build a roadmap for suomi.fi integration (and involve the GenTax development)

2. Adopt the ‘life event’ concept into information content: new structure, new language, more visuals (incl videos)

3. Design an action plan for revamping Verohallinto’s brand image. (social media integration, new visual identity, Tax Office redesign)

Top 3 quick and dirty ideas:1. Adopt 3-division for vero.fi: Individuals, Organisations,

Tax Professionals. (=clarity for users)

2. Put most popular e-services and frequently accessed information pages clearly visible on Home Page. (=people find their way)

3. Add a video and infographics to Tax Card page. (=more people will use the service)

Social media integration:1. Starting point: a social media strategy is needed (before doing anything else!!)

• rethink what the purpose of each some channel is and who is the target/actual audience.

• make a plan for some content and assign measurable objectives.

• employee advocacy - see what it can offer?

• re-evaluate cost vs results

2. Integration to vero.fi:

• ‘connect with us’ on pages (see prototype for an example)

• videos on content pages and e-service pages helping to use and understand

• live feed for FB and Twitter on vero.fi

• Current problem: website and Vero some are from two different worlds! Think of social media as a natural continuation of Verohallinto’s service channels. It should not be separate.

3. Ideas for social media campaigns for Verohallinto on the Team Doyle Blog

• Vero – a social brand? YES! URL: http://verodigitalfuture.tumblr.com/post/124239613235/vero-social-brand-yes

• Social media campaign ideas URL: http://verodigitalfuture.tumblr.com/post/124241805355/are-you-a-sage-muse-or-a-pitchman

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Recommendations for challenges in MyTax implementationIs there another way to introduce it with the key functions of MyTax, such as the mailbox and data analytics already before 2020?

Solution: The Ministry of Finance is launching similar services on its new suomi.fi platform to citizens across Finland later this year. And they are giving out the back-end to use at all public agencies.

The new suomi.fi web platform within the national service architecture (kansallinen palveluarkkitehtuuri) is bringing available ICT tools such as electronic identification, a citizen mailbox, and a data exchange X-road. These tools are exactly what MyTax needs to become a reality.

GenTax will involve similar solutions to that of the new suomi.fi and those needed in MyTax, though with a very different timeframe: 2020. All of Verohallinto’s IT staff and IT resources are directed at GenTax for the next 4 years. Simplified, this would mean that development would stagnate for the next 4-5 years. Is there an alternative route to 2020?

We propose that Verohallinto starts integrating its digital services to suomi.fi in a way that supports the new vero.fi service promise and provides a much needed help on the way to 2020.

It is also an opportunity to build a better user experience for e-services powered by GenTax. With the amount of sheer horsepower (i.e. the multitude of organisations involved, political power committed and resources assigned), it can be assumed that in 4 years suomi.fi will be well tested and a superior national wide platform that will be nothing less than a hard benchmark to follow. Vero should get on board now!

Suggested roadmap for new vero.fi implementation:• 2015-2016: Implement ‘life events’ to Vero.fi

• 2015-2016: (Use Solita for) Build up MyTax and e-services/GenTax part of the website.

• 2015: Build a 3-year roadmap for suomi.fi integration

• 2015 – cont: Integrate GenTax UI team with vero.fi team

• 2016: introduce limited MyTax with a small number of customers: MailBox, Calendar, Limited Profile (suomi.fi enabled)

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9 . R E F E R E N C E S

Adage 2015 Adage. (2015) Vero.fi Käyttäjäkysely. Kyselyraportti 12.5.2015.

LVM 2014 Ministry of transportation and Communication. (2014) MyData – A Nordic Model for human-centered personal data management and processing. Study. 9.2014. Available at http://www.lvm.fi/c/document_library/get_file?folderId= 3759139&name=DLFE-27119.pdf&title=MyData-nordic-model

Valtioneuvosto 2015 Finnish Government. (2015) Government Programme. 29.5. 2015. Available at http://valtioneuvosto.fi VM 2014 Ministry of Finance. (2014) Julkisen hallinnon asiakkuusstrategia. Valtiovarainministeriön julkaisuja. Available at http://vm.fi/documents/10623/1464506/ julkisen-hallinnon-asiakkuusstrategia-2020.pdf/ 12d3430d-8eee-4a02-9284-27dd815c8ef5

Verohallinto 2015a Verohallinto. (2015) The initial Project Brief.

Verohallinto 2015b Verohallinto. (2015) Organization of the Finnish Tax Administration 1.1.2015. Available at: www.vero.fiHome > Tax Administration > Finnish Tax Administration >Presentation of the Finnish Tax Administration > Organization. Referred 30.7.2015.

Verohallinto 2015c Verohallinto. (2015) Vero.fi -sivuston uudistamisen esiselvitys. Esitys. 10.6.2015

Lörincz et al. 2012 eGovernment Benchmark Framework 2012-2015. Method paper. 7.2012 European Union. Available at http://ec.europa.eu/digital-agenda/en/news/ eu-egovernment-report-2015-shows-online-public -services-europe-are-smart-could-be-smarter OKM 2015 A blog about Digipalvelutehdas. https://tarinoitadigitalisaatiosta.wordpress.com

Ala-Harja 2015 Interviewed by Team Doyle at Ministry of Finance. Finland

Background documents received from Verohallinto • Verohallinto annual reports 2010-2014 • EON proactive customer service introductory slideshow• Preliminary report on the redesign of vero.fi (06/2015)• Vero24 service concept• Report on vero.fi user survey (05/2015)• Vero.fi general web analytics (slideshow) (1/2015)• Vero.fiUsability report from 2011• Vero’s involvement with SADe and KaPA (national service architecture)

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Future of Vero.fi - today / Report by Aalto Masters Students on ITP 2015

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