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We now have 23 service standards to measure how we perform in various areas. Table 2.18 shows how we performed against the service standards in 2006-07 compared to last year. For our monthly performance against the service standards see www.ato.gov.au/annualreport/quicklinks
We reviewed the service standards and benchmarks as part of our 2006 agency agreement process and made some changes as a result.
We split the service standard for 'Refund of activity statements' into two standards to identify different benchmarks for paper and electronic activity statements. This is consistent with the way we treat standards for paper and electronic income tax returns.
This year the benchmark for:
- 'Electronic debit activity statements' was raised from 92% to 95% as we have achieved consistently above benchmark performance over the past four years
- 'General correspondence requiring a response' was decreased from 87% to 85% for the implementation phase of our easier, cheaper and more personalised (change) program, and
- 'Complaints' was decreased from 100% to 85% to reflect the broader scope of cases included in this service standard.
We updated our counting rules and definitions to reflect changes to the standards and practices and to maintain robust reporting processes.
Some of the service standard benchmarks for 2007-08 and 2008-09 will be revised downwards in light of change program impacts.
We introduced a new service standard 'Resolution of complaints' in September 2005, in response to a recommendation from the Commonwealth Ombudsman and improvements to our reporting systems which made it possible to capture the data. While we have reported the new service standard internally for more than a year, it will form part of the index from 2007-08.
Table 2.18:
Table 2.18: continued
Our full-year performance shows that we equalled or exceeded annual benchmarks in 13 of our 23 service standards (see table 2.18) and achieved an overall index of 1.10 on a benchmark of 1.0. This is a decline on last year's index performance of 1.26.
With the service standards that exceeded the annual benchmark, we nevertheless experienced difficulties in achieving some monthly benchmarks. This is reflected in the monthly performance for the following service standards:
- Registrations
- Refund activity statements - paper
- Refund activity statements - electronic
- Visit general enquiry service
- Objections against private written binding advice, and
- Audits finalised advice.
For our monthly performance against the service standards see www.ato.gov.au/annualreport/quicklinks
We did not achieve the annual benchmarks for the following service standards this year:
- Electronic tax returns (0.3% below benchmark), Paper tax returns (0.3% below benchmark) and Electronic amendments (0.9 % below benchmark) as a result of income tax processing being detrimentally affected by system-related issues
- Refund of overpaid tax (6.4% below benchmark), General correspondence requiring a response (5.3% below benchmark), Paper amendments (36.8% below benchmark) and Clerical and administrative errors (6.2% below benchmark). Teething problems associated with implementing our new work management system at the start of the processing year were a significant factor in these standards not being met
- Excise fuel schemes - claims (3.7% below benchmark), were impacted by the new workload associated with processing early payment claims of fuel tax credits. This measure was introduced to help taxpayers deal with any cash flow impacts arising from the introduction of the new fuel tax credit arrangements. In the transition to the new arrangements there was a high exception rate on claims, until taxpayers adjusted to the new process
- Telephone general enquiries (3.0% below benchmark), with key contributing factors being technology infrastructure and call routing limitations during the peak month of July, and higher than expected call loads across the year, and
- Tax practitioners premium telephone service (3.0% below benchmark), with the key contributing factor being higher than expected calls during the peak month of July, including calls resulting from minor instability of the Tax Agent Portal.
Year to date service standards performance information is available on www.ato.gov.au and is updated monthly.
Sections within 2.2 Our effectiveness indicators
Last Modified: Thursday, 20 December 2007