Reform Coordination and Project Change Managament Advisor at the State Tax Service, Ukraine

By providing a long term advisory, the prime objective of the intervention was to improve quality of activities and enhanced responsiveness on the part of the State Tax Services (STS) of Ukraine, within the World Bank "State Tax Service Modernisation Project" and in general to improve STS capacity to drive tax reforms.

The advisor supported the STS to manage change as well as to increase the rate of development and to mitigate risks under the World Bank project. This included support to pilot IT projects and support to making the IT systems operational.

The assignment was to be divided into two activity areas:

1. Project Management with the following task areas:

• Provide examples of the best international practices in the field of tax reform
• Proposals  as regards changes to the STS offices’ organizational structures and consolidation as a result of the WB’s projects implementation
• Ensure provisioning of advice and recommendations to the STS on management issues, change and risk management under the WB project
• Ensure preparation of documents needed to reconcile the Modernization program and the Tax block and the Documents management  system procurement, comments concerning the WB project risks, proposals concerning development of risk mitigation efforts
• Hold presentations needed for senior management of the STS and officials responsible for the WB’s project in the regions
• Provide advice on issues of the WB project change management

2.System Nationwide Rollout is naturally connected to that the system is first piloted, tested and ready for implementation – which was not the case at project start and it is for SIPU not clear to what extent STS at project end is actually using the system as envisaged after the finalization of the pilot phase in August 2012. This component envisaged the following task areas:

• Advice and recommendations to the senior management of STS on issues of system implementation
• Monthly reports on the WB project to the project leader of the STS implementation status during the contract validity period, periodic meetings with the Contractors, in terms of their support to the Tax Block and the Document Management System, supporting procurement of the hardware and also liaise with other stakeholders for the review
• Provide recommendations related to the activities of the WB project managers and its executive manager in compliance with the adopted Tax Code

According to independent evaluations, STS has after the arrival of the advisor been able to better meet different project deadlines.

The advisor was especially engaged in the following tax reform areas:
– Systems for horizontal monitoring and advanced tax rulings
– Development of tax payers units within STS and tax payers service centres
– A proposal for organisational change and institutional development (a transition plan) within STS as a result of use of new technology
– Improvement of STS website
– More in depth analysis of tax blocks, databases for registration and an improved document management system
– Analysis of areas of improvement for tax education
– A new format for a strategic plan