Rescind decision on PaCCS

The Federal Board of Revenue has asked the Agility Logistics Software developer of Pakistan's Customs Computerised System (PaCCS) not to shut down on May 15, 2010 and continue to provide service until June 30, 2010. The FBR had early notified Agility that its services will be terminated and the PaCCS will be taken over by PRAL.
It appears rather late in the day for Agility to accommodate FBR's request as the Kuwait-based regional office of Logistics has already laid-off its staff. Agility Logistics won the FBR pilot project through a tender and in an open competition. The application designers, ie the project team were the FBR officials and Agility were the application developers. Agility developed the PaCCS application as per requirement provided by the FBR.
Therefore, the application needs to be measured against user requirements. Agility and the PaCCS project team had to remain within the scope of the project and bear no responsibility for the poor infrastructure, lack of policy and monitoring and the issues of day-to-day operation.
According to port users, the clearance of containers had reduced from 11 days to four hours due to the PaCCS system although it was still in a pilot stage. The rationale of having a pilot is to identify the gaps and strengthen the system to fill them before a rollout because a pilot project is an activity planned as a test or trial.
The domain experts, in this case, have be the Customs professionals, who are familiar with the laws and only they can guide technology experts to align the business process accordingly. If the automated clearance system is in accordance with laws and rules then there is no laxity. Other FBR applications like: One Customs; STARR; E-Filing are at present not inter-linked. As a consequence, there have been reports of leakages based on connivance between the IT experts and Customs staff.
Prior to termination of Agility contract, members of the PaCCS project team were suspended. Have these officials been charge-sheeted? And, what is their defence? The other reason, cited by the FBR, in termination of Agility's contract is a case filed by the US Defence Department on Logistics in the US. This is a civil case of overcharging and has no bearing on the software developed by Agility for the FBR.
The business community is nervous and fears that improvement in the clearance procedure, in relation to time, has been impressive and termination of the Agility contract could adversely impact them financially. Therefore, the FBR needs to take a second look and reconsider its earlier decision. Lower customs revenue collection is not due to the software but because of the archaic valuation system, where the trade and the revenue officials agree on a valuation instead of collecting revenue on the real value of the goods. No IT system is completely foolproof.
Dual control mechanisms, user ID to both internal and external users, for accessing the application remotely, are issued by the relevant department and a formal change request system has to be in place. These standards in software must be in the Agility system. Software can check the veracity of information. The famous maxim for computers "garbage in and garbage out" holds true for all. Don't blame the software just because you don't know how to use it - learn to avoid potholes.
However, any software aimed at modernising tax collection should ensure: (a) it is used to assist taxpayer in the compilation of their tax returns; (b) it has minimum compliance cost to the taxpayer, convenient in complying with obligations and would respond rapidly to their requests for documentation that facilitates their businesses; (c) it should also help FBR to control the processes and machinery in optimising revenue and increase the quality of service to taxpayers by reducing the time of processing the returns.