Inland Revenue Accounts Office, Cumbernauld, Scotland

Summary

An employee involvement initiative has transformed the Inland Revenue Accounts Office, Cumbernauld, Scotland, from a bureaucratic, poor performing organization to a benchmark of excellent public service. A focus on process measurement and improvement and total commitment from senior management have proved crucial to effecting the massive culture change required to achieve this turnaround.

Introduction

The Inland Revenue Accounts Office in Cumbernauld, Scotland, is one of two offices set up by the UK government in 1978 to deal with the UK's tax and National Insurance payments. Previously the work had been handled by a network of small local offices.

With about 1100 employees, and an annual operating budget of around £31 million, the Accounts Office, Cumbernauld, maintains about 26 million taxpayer accounts; banks and accounts for £82,000 million of tax and National Insurance contributions annually; and handles an average of £272 million in payments each day. The Office is also responsible for the registration and administration of Profit Related Pay Schemes for the whole of the UK.

Vision

The Accounts Office vision statement says that 'by the year 2000 to be recognized as the leading public sector organization in the UK'. Recent plaudits suggest this to be an attainable goal. For example, in 1996 the Office achieved Chartermark status, which is awarded to organizations which provide excellent public service. In that same year it was the winner of the Quality Scotland Business Excellence Award for the Public Sector.

The latter is based on the European Foundation for Quality Management's Business Excellence Framework. The framework assesses performance against nine criteria, split into the two performance dimensions of enablers and results. With each criteria assigned a percentage weighting to denote relative importance, the enablers are leadership, people management, policy and strategy, resources, and processes. The results criteria are people satisfaction, customer satisfaction, impact on society, and business results. In 1998 the Accounts Office was one of the first two public sector prize winners in the prestigious European Quality Awards.

However, such accolades would have seemed an impossible dream in the early to mid 1980s, when the culture of the Office could, according to the director of the Office, Andrew Geddes OBE, be described in one word, "awful".

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