Background to HM Revenue & Customs

HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) is one of the UK's biggest organisations, with around 61,000 full-time equivalent staff in 360 offices. Almost every individual and business in the UK is a direct customer of HMRC.

It is an effective, efficient and impartial tax and payments authority with a vital purpose: collecting the money that pays for the UK's public services and helping families and individuals with targeted financial support. HMRC helps the honest majority to get their tax right and makes it hard for the dishonest minority to cheat the system. It collects over £500 billion a year in revenue from 45 million individuals and 4.9 million business customers and also plays a key role in enforcing UK border controls and the national minimum wage levels, administering environmental taxes and recovering student loans.

HMRC is a non-ministerial Government department formed in 2005 from the merger of the Inland Revenue and HM Customs and Excise.

The 2014-2016 Business Plan which sets out HMRC's plans for achieving its strategic objectives and delivering its vision is available online (see useful links below).

HMRC's Digital Strategy

The ambitious Digital programme that HMRC is embarking on and our vision of a paperless Tax Authority, is setting peoples' imaginations alight across government and encouraging innovation right across the Civil Service. HMRC is one of the leaders of Government's digital journey, working to create a faster, sleeker and fully inclusive way of operating the UK's complex tax system.

HMRC is at the forefront of transforming our services by becoming increasingly digital, enabling customers to do more for themselves online, in real time. But with that comes the challenges of being a big, established organisation dealing with the staggering changes brought by digital technology. HMRC is designing products and services making it as simple as possible for our customers to use. The move to digital services and the way HMRC uses customer data, and data sent to it by other organisations, is critical.

HMRC has a hugely complex IT estate ranging from 'state of the art' Hadoop data analytics platforms to 40 year old systems. The breadth, variety and complexity of these systems and the business processes they support are on a scale rarely seen in other global organisations. The increasing year on year cost of running these systems has become unsustainable. There is a need to reduce the reliance on large single suppliers and move to a structure which is accountable for its own IT delivery. As the ASPIRE contract comes to an end in 2017, HMRC is transitioning to a new operating model which will see the department move towards the provision of new digital services for its customers.

Chief Digital and Information Officer

HMRC's Chief Digital and Information Officer (CDIO), Mark Dearnley, is responsible for one of the largest and most complex IT estates in the UK, and leads HMRC's digital and data strategies and has significant involvement in the wider cross-government digital agenda. The CDIO is also responsible for the running of live IT operations and implementing the IT Sourcing Strategy.

The CDIO is the Senior Information Risk Owner (SIRO) which covers all aspects of protective, physical, personnel and information security

Mark Dearnley Biography

Mark was previously CIO at Vodafone UK where he introduced Cloud-based technologies. He was named Oracle Global Business Unit CIO of the Year in 2012. He has also held senior positions with Cable and Wireless and Boots the Chemists. He began his career in the aerospace industry. Mark is a Fellow of the Institute of Engineering and Technology and British Computer Society.

Pete Schofield Biography

Pete was previously Head of IT Operations at Marks and Spencer where he was accountable for the successful delivery and running of all IT services across Marks and Spencer UK and internationally. He has also held senior positions at The Carphone Warehouse and BSkyB. He began his career as a graduate computer programmer with Prudential. He is also a STEM ambassador encouraging young people to enjoy STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) subjects.

Useful Links & Information

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