Pennsylvania Department of Revenue Case Study

Situation

The Pennsylvania Department of Revenue (PA DOR) is responsible for collecting all Pennsylvania state taxes, as well as local sales taxes for two counties, funds for public transportation and other state authorities. In total, PA DOR processes over 10 million tax returns a year. PA DOR employees noticed the quality of essential work suffering during tax season as result of time spent managing and training temporary staff. The deteriorating accuracy led to increased workloads for examiners in the later stages of the tax processing operation. The addition of a second shift of seasonal workers created financial and managerial strains. PA DOR needed to eliminate the cost and burden of staffing and supervising seasonal workers. They sought a solution that would also improve accuracy and protect sensitive tax information.

Solution

The Pennsylvania Department of Revenue chose virtualsolutions’ vcapture to fulfill the Department’s data processing needs. vcapture offers a secure and cost effective alternative to staffing a full shift of seasonal data entry personnel. vcapture was easily integrated into PA DOR’s EMC2/Captiva FormWare application using PA DOR’s existing software, scanners and staff. With vcapture’s Snippet technology, sensitive paper documents never leave the confines of PA DOR’s organization. vcapture breaks PA DOR’s tax documents into digital Snippets. The Snippets are assigned a random ID, scrambled to guarantee security, and sent over SSL to virtualsolutions’ remote keying network. The Snippets are then dispatched to keyers who enter and verify the data using a secure web browser. Using the vcapture Secure Split Technology, fields containing sensitive information, such as social security numbers and credit card numbers, are again separated into smaller Snippets. All Secure Split Snippets are distributed to different keyers to protect further the confidential data. To ensure a 99.99% accuracy level, each Snippet is validated by at least two independent sources before the data is returned to PA DOR’s system.

Results

The Pennsylvania Department of Revenue now handles the peak processing demands of tax season without the cost and burden of training and supervising seasonal workers. With vcapture’s around the clock workforce, PA DOR’s document turnaround time improved 70%. In addition to the speed achieved with vcapture, PA DOR has cut costs and eased data processing burdens across all department operations while improving data accuracy. Using vcapture’s adaptable form technology, PA DOR easily adds more form types to the vcapture system. Today, PA DOR not only processes forms for the Department of Revenue, but by employing a Shared Services model, they are able to handle form processing for additional state agencies including but not limited to: The Public Utility Commission, Department of Public Welfare, Department of Motor Vehicles, Department of Insurance, Department of Labor & Industry and Department of Environmental Protection.