Tech Talk - April 2019

Tech Talk - April 2019

April 2019 Union News

Recently, the Technological Change Committee received an update on an item called the Digital Mailroom Project (DMP).

The project scope will include five standardized business capabilities:

  1. Receive – Paper and electronic correspondence is received and opened, electronic mail is received and virus scanned;
  2. Digitize – Paper and electronic documents are converted to digital images;
  3. Extract – Data from the image is extracted through automation and/or manual keying and made available in a format ingestible by a CRA system;
  4. Store – Images are stored so that authorized individuals from various program areas can access it, and dispose of it according to the appropriate disposition requirements; and
  5. Notify - Existing internal systems are notified when data is available and an acknowledgement of receipt is sent to clients.

At the November 2018 working group meeting, the UTE was informed of the posting of an Invitation to Qualify (ITQ) on the Government Electronic Tendering Service procurement site. The ITQ has been posted and was expected to close in December 2018. The project team anticipates establishing a list of pre-qualified vendors that meet the high-level requirements of the project, and they will be engaged in the second step of the procurement process in early 2019, when the project requirements will be refined.

The Committee will receive a further update at the upcoming May 2019 meeting.   

The DMP will be implemented in the following divisions: Charities program, Legislative and Policy committee, Regulatory Affairs, and the Service Complaints Problem Resolution Program.

UTE has asked how many employees would be impacted by these changes. Management explained that at this time the impact to CRA’s workforce profile was not known. It will take three to four years before the impacts to CRA employees currently involved in manual correspondence processing are fully identified. UTE asked why the project had to be outsourced and could not be kept in-house. Management advised that all internal, external and Matane, Québec options were considered and that the options analysis included an evaluation of costs, organizational risk and time to develop and implement the solution. The analysis revealed that it was favorable to the CRA to go outside.

The Technological Change committee will continue to receive updates on the progress of the Digital Mailroom Project and refer any loss of positions to the Workforce Adjustment Committee.

Going forward, always be aware of any new technological changes in your workplace and notify your local UTE representative.

Brian Oldford
Chair of the Technological Change Committee