CRA Changes Reflect New Economy in Financial Literacy Month

Knowledge is power. That phrase reflects not only one of the messages in CRA’s financial literacy tips, but also the reality behind one of the recently announced changes to its national processing operations. The changes reflect a reality for many “old economy” workplaces: the new digital economy is changing workforces and the way end users prefer to transact with a hybrid of digital and human services.

In the CRA’s case, three major changes will take place soon:

1. To enable growth in its processing activities, those operations will be housed in four centres:  Winnipeg, Sudbury, Jonquière, Summerside.

2. Three new National Verification and Collections Centres (NVCCs) will be established in Surrey, Shawinigan and St. John’s, using allocations from Budget 2016. According to the March 22, 2016, federal budget, $75.2 million is to be provided over two years to support the replacement of a myriad of human resources management, financial management and information management platforms that currently exist across various federal government departments and agencies. According to the budget documents, “once completed, this back office transformation initiative is expected to result in significantly lower annual costs to operate and maintain these functions, and will help deliver better services to Canadians.”

3. Some of the work from two other specialized processing centres in Ottawa—the Ottawa Technology Centre and the International and Ottawa Tax Services Office—will be transitioned to other centres across Canada.

These changes are largely the result of changes in the way tax returns are filed: only 16% are now submitted on paper, which is a drop of 66% in 10 years; the rest are filed electronically. According to the CRA, human resources in these areas of service will focus on more efficient processing and better service to taxpayers in call centres.

The changes are clearly affecting morale at the CRA, as reported last week, as close to 2400 full-time employees were given work force adjustment notices.

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