ATO working to boost IT resilience
The ATO has commenced work on a wide-reaching program to enhance the resilience, performance and stability of its IT systems.
The project will include a major refresh to the hardware and software used to run the ATO’s client-facing systems, including the Tax and BAS Agent Portals, according to ATO CIO Ramez Katf.
“We will focus on improving our IT design and governance, further strengthening our cybersecurity posture and improving the technology used by ATO staff to ensure they have the right tools to do their job,” he said.
This program builds on the work the ATO completed last year aimed at improving the experience for tax professionals, the superannuation industry and individual taxpayers.
“These included migrating myTax to be hosted on a cloud platform and creating a second cloud-based Standard Business Reporting (SBR) channel for the superannuation industry and tax agents,” Katf said.
“Through improved real-time monitoring, we are better placed to detect and respond to issues to minimise any impact on the community. For Tax Time 2017 we reduced critical incidents by almost half. This enabled us to reach record levels of tax returns lodged and refunds issued.”
He added that the agency has made strong progress over the last six months towards implementing the recommendations of the ATO Systems Report as well as the Australian National Audit Office (ANAO) report into the system outages that plagued the tax agency in late 2016/early 2017.
In addition to the work being done to strengthen the ATO’s IT systems and avoid future outages, the agency will this year begin to roll out a new approach to IT sourcing aimed at building the ATO’s future capability.
“Our new approach will also focus on increasing our capability to take advantage of new and emerging technologies to deliver better systems and tools for the community, our key stakeholders and staff, and, importantly, delivering value for money,” Katf said.
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