Is HMRC next to be under attack from the Robots?

Computing 1950's style - when LEO roared

1 in 3 of the world's jobs set to disappear to automation in the next 12 years.

Is HMRC just another large organisation that sees the benefit of automation as a cost cutting and efficiency improving situation?

The 1950's spawned the first commercial venture into electronic computing, built on the secret WW2 work done at Bletchley Park and the pre-war GPO research at Dollis Hill around 1938 under Tommy Flowers and his colleagues, which in turn fuelled the Bletchley technologies under Alan Turing.

Although Bletchley Park's work was secret and not known about until the 1970's, the technology obviously was.

In America ENIAC was one of the first computers developed out of the wartime experience and companies like Westinghouse would be at the forefront there in developing this technology for business and military usage.

Back in Britain, Lyons Tea was bizarrely you may think, one of the first British companies to develop a computer for business use, called LEO.

LEO - The 'Lyons Electronic Office', was set up to micro manage all aspects of the business transaction - from soup to nuts or tea to cake if you like.

In the early 1950's, an 'outsourcing' experiment was conducted at Lyons by the Social Security department. They had the social security contributions data for all citizens that paid in, run for the next year as an exercise.

The LEO computer performed the millions of calculations faultlessly in less than a weekend. The same job done manually by hand, would have taken months. 

Just after WW2, the great cybernetician Norbert Wiener predicted the mass loss of jobs to computing and he was right.

A Taxing business

So, it is no surprise to hear that HMRC is looking to computerise much of its operations in tax analysis and collecting. This is a sensible move for two reasons, accuracy and volume.

The machine can apply many rules and if the programming is correct, then the results are accurate. Thus the machine can do the massive calculation work which computers are suited to and get it right.

We are moving towards a cashless society, the trend is towards card payments and cash has its place, but cash is certainly amongst younger people almost unused as the advent of contactless cards is here. We see high street banks closing as leases come up and efficiencies made and money deposited in hard cash falls.

For HMRC, this automation should free up 'real people' to talk to when you think things have gone wrong. It isn't necessarily going to be leading to mass loss of employment, with skill full handling and managed natural wastage along with early retirement packages, the transition could be made smoothly.

However, with 1 in 3 of the world's jobs going to computers in the next 12 years, will automation be used as another cost cutting measure? Or for HMRC, could it be intelligently used to restructure the organisation to make it fitter for the future?

Bitcoin here, Bitcoin there

The rise in technology bringing in the cashless society is also bringing in the rise of cyber currencies. Paypal was almost the model for this - a virtual bank on-line, but, criminals have got to see Paypal as a model for another banking operation, as they move into off-grid currencies and monetary transactions as Paypal scrutinises the data more.

Thus Bitcoin for all its independent from the mainstream attraction, now has become one of the new underground farms.

Bitcoin, started for altruistic reasons and as an alternative, has been added to the criminal's armoury for money acquisition and revenue detection and avoidance.

The bottom line is just that - and automation is one factor that cuts costs. And does.