Imaging And Workflow System Saves Massachusetts Department Of Revenue $1.5 Million Per Year

Every year, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts receives several million tax returns, which require processing, indexing, and archiving by the Massachusetts Department of Revenue (MDOR). When Bay State tax returns were manually keyed, processing returns was a slow and tedious task. Not only did it slow refunds, if a taxpayer's return was needed for review, it could take weeks to be retrieved. And if a return was already signed out by another tax examiner, a taxpayer could wait for months for a resolution.

With a goal of trimming costs to meet the Commonwealth's budget constraints, MDOR entered into a unique partnership with Datacap. The challenge was to develop an imaging and workflow system that would replace manual data entry methods with a more productive total capture system and help reduce the enormous flow of paperwork.

The completed system – which features Datacap Taskmaster software to automate data entry – has enabled MDOR to process a quarter of a million document images per day. It has saved Massachusetts taxpayers $1.5 million a year in reduced labor costs and has made the retrieval of tax returns virtually instantaneous. Tax examiners can fetch a return at the push of a key, even one already in use by another tax examiner. The system is widely regarded as the most advanced automatic tax return processing system in the country. In fact, in 1997, the installation won the coveted Computerworld Smithsonian Award for innovations that benefit society.