Public-private partnership reaps rewards

Accounting, tax and business consultant firm BlumShapiro has teamed with the state”™s Department of Revenue Services (DRS) to launch a so-called “lean initiative” that has brought more efficiency to the state tax registration process.

The partnership has led to a quantifiably shorter tax registration period for businesses and has also allowed for a more productive reallocation of existing staff to eliminate a backlog of suspended return transactions and electronic applications, according to BlumShapiro.

BlumShapiro maintains offices in Connecticut, including in Shelton, Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

The implementation of “lean” techniques ”“ private-sector implementation tools that are employed to simplify operations and improve efficiency ”“ involved BlumShapiro working with a team of DRS employees to review the department”™s daily operations “and then making recommendations to increase efficiency and quality of services.”

“The results of our being able to work with DRS have been dramatic,” said James Kerr, a strategic partner of BlumShapiro. “The completion time for paper registrations dropped from 15-20 days to one to two days, and similar improvements were seen with online applications; the wait went from 10-13 days down to between two and five days. DRS is now a great example of what can be accomplished with an appropriate application of private sector ”˜lean”™ approaches to government agencies.”

Kerr said DRS”™s backlog of suspended return applications was significantly reduced via a tighter deadline for response from taxpayers who had not supplied complete information for their applications.