The Office of the Deputy Prime Minister is allocating funds under the £6.2m e-Innovations budget to develop a "supporting structure" for data sharing between councils across the country, aimed at catching people evading council tax. Debt recovery specialist TDX, the leading organisation on the project, told Government Computing News on 10 August 2005 that it is working with Mid Sussex DC to develop the project, which goes live next year. IT firm Agilisys is delivering some of the major components.
The aim is to track people who avoid paying council tax when moving from one borough to another.
"The money from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minster will be used threefold," said Kevin Fuller, TDX's head of strategy.
"Firstly, it will help to develop a supporting structure to enable data integrate between participating local authorities. Secondly, it will provide support from a market awareness perspective, so as to increase adoption. And thirdly it will support the trial period, which runs until to March 2006."
Councils that sign up for the scheme between now and next year will be able to use the service cost free. After that TDX expects them to be charged for the service on a payment by results, rather than subscription, basis. "Councils will only pay for the benefits they receive," said Fuller.
TDX estimates that, if all 354 local authorities use the system, an extra £100m in council tax payments could be collected each year.
Chief executive Mark Onyett said that this was the first time something as ambitious as connecting all council tax systems together had been tried in the UK.
"Our hope is that we can expect this system to cover housing benefit and other debts that local authorities have to collect, because the more joined up the more efficient and effective it can be," he said.
He added that by linking the back office functions of councils, the scheme could help local authorities to achieve the objectives of the Gershon efficiency review.
Quelle: KableNET, 11.08.2005
