No one working harder than Revenue Service staff, says States chief exec
The new chief executive of the States has defended staff at the under-pressure Revenue Service but accepted that change does need to come in the department.
Boley Smillie was facing the public for the first time, speaking at a Chamber of Commerce lunch. He was asked by former Chamber president Diane De Garis what was happening with reform of the service, where the public are concerned about significant backlogs in handling assessments.
Mrs De Garis, an accountant, said that while other jurisdictions were ‘making tax digital’ Guernsey was heading in the opposite direction, with a backlash from islanders who did not want to embrace technology.
‘What’s happened in the Revenue Service is an example of where we need to see reform across the wider public service,’ Mr Smillie said.
He toured the Revenue offices at Edward T Wheadon House last month.
‘I would say first of all, there is no one working harder across the organisation than the people in that area, and I already feel rather protective of making sure that we air that, and making sure that people on the front line are not burdened with some of the issues that exist,’ he said.
‘We’ve been talking about backlogs for a long, long time now, and some of that is about reforms that have clearly not delivered on the benefits that were intended at the outset of the initiation of a project. So there is a bit of work that will go on in the next few weeks to reset that, to be very open and honest about what it is we’ve got to do, how long it’s going to take it get it fixed, and what we’ve got to do, but there has to be a greater focus on delivering the efficiencies, and by that I mean the way our customers interact with us, more so than within the organisation.’
Mr Smillie, who oversaw a technology revolution at the Post Office before moving to the States, said that legacy computer systems at the States had been replaced, but often not with systems that would have been expected to deliver improvements.
‘I do acknowledge that there is a big problem there and we need to fix it,’ he said.
‘But the point I would reiterate is that the people working in the department on the front line are working very hard.’
Mr Smillie also said he wanted to do more to build trust and confidence in the public service, and expressed concerns that the States was trying to ‘do too much’ and needed to prioritise better.
