The South African Revenue Service (SARS) is among the government entities that are on the hunt for external technology, specifically artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities, to streamline services, boost efficiency and enhance government revenue management.
This, as the South African government increasingly turns to technology in areas such as digitising visa applications, a new high-tech forensic lab to help investigate complex corruption and digital financial crimes, and AI to pull in outstanding revenue in the form of taxes.
The taxman’s release of a request for information on AI tools coincides with the Department of Home Affairs’ preparations to launch its Online Verification System next week.
This, as an upgraded National Population Register introduces a significant cost increase for biometric verifications, from 15c to R10. TymeBank has expressed concerns that this 6 500% increase could directly financially exclude South Africa’s poor, as the cost would be passed on to those seeking to open accounts.
SARS is progressing towards becoming a “SMART Modern SARS” by 2030. This transformation requires developing an intelligent tax and customs administration platform and a broader tax ecosystem.
According to SARS, this ecosystem “depends on and embeds advanced data science and AI”. The tools it seeks will “harness the transformative power of people, data science and AI in tax administration”.
The tax authority is exploring the market for an AI-driven digital twinning (cognitive decision automation) solution to integrate AI with virtual replicas of physical entities.
SARS seeks details on available products, their specifications, availability, potential prices and implementation timelines.
It currently uses advanced data analytics and AI “to detect tax-compliance risks, close the tax gap and improve overall compliance rates”. The agency, tasked with collecting R1.986 trillion in tax for the year to February, says its objectives include “modernising our systems to provide digital and streamlined online services”.
SARS emphasises that its request for information is “focused market research and not a competitive bid”. However, the document is structured exactly like a bid would have been. The request for information is open until 4 July.
The objective of any AI-driven technological solution is to “enable SARS to replicate and automate complex, human-logic decision-making processes across its operations”. This is intended to reduce the mundane and resource-intensive work its staff need to do by mimicking human decision logic through AI and machine learning models.
The tender document notes: “By leveraging technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning and natural language processing, the solution aims to transform this [tax decision-making] human-intensive process into efficient, scalable, consistent and intelligent digital workflows that enhance operational efficiency”.
However, SARS recently informed ITWeb that it “has the technology it needs. SARS will be intensifying the implementation of the rules to detect non-compliance.”
At the same time, other South African government entities are also seeking to enhance their technological abilities.
The Electoral Commission is looking for tech solutions through three tenders. One tender seeks professional services and support for geographic information systems, aiming to establish a panel of up to five skilled consulting personnel.
Another focuses on creating a panel of five SAP enterprise resource planning professionals and support services for a system “intensively” used to support and enable key business, corporate, logistics, financial, operations and management reporting.
Additional open tenders include National Treasury’s search for a service provider to redesign its internet and intranet websites, and Eskom’s request for proposals for the maintenance and support of its multi-channel bill delivery system.
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