The committee's report on the department's performance during 2008-09, published on 9 March 2010, says that despite substantial investment, HM Revenue and Customs' IT performance was "uneven".
In a previous report the committee had recommended that HMRC improved its contracts with IT suppliers and noted that one system has been delayed by a year. A consequence of this delay was that during 2008-09 the number of cases which needed manual processing increased from 16.5m in 2007-08 to 35m.
Against this background the committee says it as surprised to see HMRC declare in its annual report that it had been "hailed as a shining example of how to use technology to take government services to a new level".
It describes HMRC chief executive Lesley Strathie as remaining "bullish" about the department's IT progress, including a new agreement with its suppliers under the Aspire contract, which Strathie says will significantly reduce costs for the department over the coming years.
In its conclusion the report says that the future performance of HMRC will be highly dependent on improvements to its IT systems. "We will continue to monitor progress of its IT up-grading progress, including the new Aspire contract," it says.
The findings also reveal that the number of complaints about the department's online services increased from 514 in 2007-08 to 1,443 in 2008-09.
Furthermore, its contact centres answered only 57% of all attempts to call its helplines during the year.
The committee says that HMRC responded to this by saying that its performance is affected by peaks in contact – tax credit renewals (April to August), child benefit and return to education notifications (August and September) and the self assessment filing deadline (January) – but that performance outside these peaks is better and that they answered 75% of call attempts for all but three weeks in the non-peak period.
"Performance at HMRC remains mixed with considerable room for improvement and considerable challenges remain to be overcome if HMRC is to achieve this improvement," the report says.
"Noting a 7% increase in total recorded customer complaints, we urge HMRC to reflect on whether customer experiences of HMRC are yet improving as much as their summary of 'strong progress' implies."
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