Building up eGovernment readiness in Polish Customs

Major institutional change had to be implemented in Polish Customs in the European Union accession process. The change was managed with the strategic approach and based on the implementation of the logically integrated information system. Since June 1999 till May 1st 2004 Polish Customs Administration was reorganised vertically and geographically on all levels while new areas of activity were added. Overall service efficiency of 1.26% was achieved and budgetary revenues collected by Customs were raised from 30% to 50% with constant improvement for traders in terms of friendliness and time/cost for controls. The information system was built with focus on overall cost and quality of customs data while ensuring maximum data security. With regard to EDI and e-readiness Polish Customs bypassed the era of EDIFACT messaging with successful rollout and countrywide implementation of the Integrated Customs Duty and Tax System (ICDTS) based on XML and Web services. Polish Customs became eGovernment leader in Poland successfully implementing open standards for real business activities with millions of operations. Polish Customs became also a leader in Customs Union building-up public access to the fully Integrated Master Tariff and ensuring adequate EU interoperability and controls since May 1st 2004. As the first customs administration Poland implemented simultaneously the SAD 2006 form with the accession date thus cutting future costs for the traders. In the re-organisation process number of customs locations was decreased from 400 to 228 while over 900 officers were reallocated to the current Polish part of the Eastern/Northern border of EU and 4,500 officers were rearranged to post clearance control activities.

Main results, benefits and impacts

The Polish Customs Administration is currently operating a very functional and flexible information system. Efficient and effective management implies new tasks to be assigned to the Polish Customs Administration. New activities are constantly being added with minimum changes in personnel count. Regional leadership approach successfully verified during the institutional change results in the establishment of highly sustainable and competent system owners teams. With very low development and maintenance costs of the whole information system Customs became leaders in e-readiness in the Polish government administration. Each PLN spent for running Polish Customs Service brings back more than 78 PLN of revenue it collects to the State (and EU) budget. Overall investment costs for a whole IT system implementation were below 50 million ?. The number of traders registered for submitting and monitoring customs declarations on-line increases. Efficient roll-out schemes resulted in rapid wide spreading of use of eGovernment techniques. Examples of these were in pilot implementation of CELINA entry processing system where over 90% of electronic declarations in region were achieved within one month. Another good example is a country wide introduction of Intrastat declarations (see graphs on Intrastat statistics), where over 70% of declarations have been collected electronically. Traders are being actively encouraged to do business with Customs on-line and to use easily accessible web consulting tools such as Tariff Calculator and Tariff Browser. There are already millions of operations accomplished on-line since 2003. Availability of on-line access to powerful validation and information features on May 1st 2004 enormously cut traders´ accession date costs. The impressive statistics of massive business use of Customs Gateway and websites are attached. Worth of noting is the learning curve effect clearly visible on several attached graphs and especially on efficiency of submitting declarations through Internet. Therefore it could be assessed that several web services of Polish Customs are reaching maturity in sense of impressive numbers of messages flowing and moreover in terms of quality and efficiency. Simplification for trade, introduction of eGovernment solutions contribute to the overall IT education of the society and increasing interest in use of computer technology and communication with administration and in general (meeting Lisbon objectives) Polish Customs is leading the process of eGovernment in Poland and gives positive example to the other administrations. Its impact on other eGovernment projects in Poland is significant and its success shows that it is possible to build eGovernment systems even in the countries having very weak broadband penetration rate.

Return on investment

Return on investment: Not applicable / Not available

Lessons learnt

- It is of the utmost value for successful, cost effective management and implementation that the IT strategy is an integral part of the all consecutive business strategies. - The condition of success was proper methodology of management of IT projects: fast decision making track, clear definition of competencies and responsibilities. Establishment of regional project management teams transforming into system owners was crucial for the overall success of the programme. However distributed development teams have to be supported with thoroughly established and balanced steering and coordinating structures. - The use of existing advanced and open standards and solutions makes Polish system user-friendly, flexible and scalable, and maintainable at very low cost. - The dynamics of legal and organizational changes, also within the EU, require flexibility of management structures (incl. change management capacity), as well as flexibility of IT solutions. Polish Customs created such IT solution which technically is prepared to take up solutions of Modernized EU Customs Code and those of the e-Customs once they are clearly defined. - Today IT and Internet technology as well as open standards enable to implement widely used eGovernment system with weak ICT infrastructure, expensive Internet and small broadband penetration rate. General learning point: - IT systems and eGovernment are key elements in current public services. Organizational restructuring must take under consideration IT strategy as an integral part of all business strategies. - Proper methodology of management of IT projects with fast decision making track and clear definition of competencies and responsibilities must be put into practice. In such big countries as Poland establishment of regional project management teams transforming into system owners is crucial for the overall success of the programme. However distributed development teams have to be supported with thoroughly established and balanced steering and coordinating structures. - Existing advanced and open standards must be used while implementing eGovernment systems. If there are no national interoperability framework the IDA rules or standards used in other EU countries need to be used. Using such standards systems can be build up and maintained with low cost and they are user-friendly, flexible and scalable. - The dynamics of legal and organizational changes, also within the EU, require flexibility of management structures (incl. Change management capacity), as well as flexibility of IT solutions. - Countries with weak telecommunication infrastructure can build good eGovernment G2B system if they: - use electronic documents based on XML format, - publish XML schemas in advance to help businesses to implement changes to their internal applications, - organize training and information campaign, - prepare dedicated application for traders to test their solutions before going live.