A standing-room-only audience at FTB headquarters in Sacramento gathered to mark the occasion, which also recognized the implementation this year of California’s new Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC).
Among many new features, EDR re-engineers filing and validation processes, enables scanned document imaging instead of paper, improved self-service options through the “MyFTB” online taxpayer folder, and imaged cashiering to speed up payment processing.
Franchise Tax Board chief information officer Cathy Cleek said the project scanned 350 million documents, wrote more than 1 million lines of code, and doubled the FTB’s data center hardware and software for the EDR project.
Cleek identified the most important factor for the EDR project: “Projects are successful when the team is successful. Individual success is not the key,” Cleek said.
Cleek said the entire FTB organization and its field offices; the departments of Technology and General Services, and Senate and Assembly staff; and the state’s vendor partners all had an important role in the project.
CGI was the prime system integrator on the Enterprise Data to Revenue project. Accenture, Elite Analytics, IBM, Impression Technology, OnCore LLC, PTP and RSI were subcontractors.
Dave Delgado, senior vice president and U.S. West business unit leader for CGI, said the EDR project is of a magnitude that isn’t readily apparent to some observers.
“But I can tell you the automation is state of the art. The data that is harvested and leveraged is massive. EDR is not a project for the faint of heart. It’s highly technical, it has significant capabilities that solve very difficult problems, and provides data management while improving customer service — something that FTB prides itself on,” Delgado said.
To date, the EDR project has helped California collect an additional $2.7 billion in revenue so far, and officials expect it to bring in at least $1 billion annually going forward.
Several state executives gave remarks at Wednesday’s celebration, including FTB executive officer Selvi Stanislaus, State Controller Betty Yee, GovOps Secretary Maribel Batjer and Board of Equalization chair Fiona Ma.
Yee commended the Franchise Tax Board for quickly implementing the state’s new EITC.
“We have really done a great job, with no lead time, of putting $190 million worth of credit into the households of 365,000 families this very first year. That is an accomplishment with no lead time,” Yee said.
(left to right) FTB Chief Information Officer Cathy Cleek, GovOps Secretary Maribel Batjer, State Controller Betty Yee and FTB Executive Officer Selvi Stanislaus. Photos: Matt Williams
