ABSIA questions and comments on SBR

Introduction

The purpose of this document is to summarise the responses to the set of 37 questions and comments raised by ABSIA in its submissionto Geoff Leeper 16 June 2015, its meeting with Steve Hamilton,Chris Thorne and Lesley Slevin on 23 July 2015 and our meeting with SWDs in Melbourne on 29 July 2015. Some of the questions consist ofother questions. The questions are numbered sequentially (from 1 to 37).

Some of the questions refer to similar subject matter or overlap so, for ease of communication, we have grouped the questions into nine topic areas as follows:

  • T-01: Conformance testing
  • T-02: Wholesale strategy
  • T-03: Deployment
  • T-04: Communications
  • T-05:Artefacts
  • T-06: Schedules
  • T-07: Education and support
  • T-08: Scope
  • T-09: Performance

For each topic area, we have summarised the responses to the questions as well as listing the questions with their specific responses. A single complete list of the question is at Appendix A.

T-01: Conformance testing

Summary

Our testing capabilities change, environments change and so does our knowledge of particular issues or tests for which we require undertakings. We understand that there is a need consistently to improve our offerings to SWDs and to review the quality of test scenarios with the intention of eventually using ELS test scenarios. Using ELS test scenarios requiresan ELS staff transition, which is to occur for Tax Time 17.In the meantime, we will continueto work with industry to improve our current conformance test scenarios.

Specific response

ID / Action Item / Response
11 / Test scenarios - quality needs to be improved, explore the use of ELS test scenarios and extend them (they have ABNs, TFN and WPNs)Work with Industry to improve conformance test scenarios / Exploring the use of ELS test scenarios for Tax Time 17however will require ELS staff transition. Appreciate and will action the value in conducting regular reviews with externals on conformance data as part of each new form delivery.

T-02: Wholesale strategy

Summary

We are committed to full consultation with SWDs regarding the wholesale/retail services. To help with providing information to developers, a recent “Let’s Talk’ article (2 November 15), entitled “Digital services – planning for the future”, highlights a recent workshop held with Future Tax Industry Working group to review digital services currently offered on the Tax agent portal. It was the intention to review the services, therefore prioritising’s for either transitioning to SBR-enabled practice management software or redevelopment on the portal. Further to this call for comment, Daniel Bamford presentation for the ATO SWD partnership event 9-10 September, titled “Future of the ATO’s digital services” explained how the ATO intend to deliver services as they increase the digital offering, ensuring new services will be made available as either Retail or Wholesale. He further outlined how the ATO intends to do all of this in collaboration with technology partners, software developers and tax practitioners.

Specific responses

ID / Action Item / Response
36.1 / 1. Provide information to externals on the delivery of wholesale services - Daniel Bamford / Featured as a ‘Lets Talk’ article, 2 November, was explained that the intention to review digital services.
Daniel Bamford presentation to the September ‘ATO SWD partnership event’ outlines how the ATO will deliver the future experience retail and wholesale and is available via the SIPO site
36.2 / 2. Ensure there is a better alignment of the wholesale services to when retail offerings are made - Daniel Bamford / Presentation from ATO SWD partnership event – available viasoftwaredevelopers.ato.gov.ausite

T-03: Deployments

Summary

Because of discussions with The Future of Tax Professionals 2015/16 Working Group, and with SWDs, we have introduced a Production Verification Testing (PVT) process to ensure that risks to Tax Professionals, SWDs and the ATO is properly mitigated and managed. A PVT tests end-to-end, live business scenarios in the production environment in a controlled manner.

Several PVTs have already taken place and are collectively contributing to improving the experience for Tax Professionals.

Specific responses

ID / Action Item / Response
10 / Work with Future of Tax professional 2015/16 working group to explore the opportunity for Tax Professionals to pilot ELS2SBR in production / Engagement of tax professionals in the testing of Production Variation Tests (PVT), all SWD’s to be advised of who their account manager is, direct contact if require any help or have a question.

T-04: Communications

Summary

The ATO is reviewing the way in which communications about the Practitioner Lodgment Service (PLS) is managed and made available. This will include a redesign of the current SWD website (run by SIPO). This work will be based on consultation with SWDs to determine their information needs and, most importantly, to identify how SWDs wish to retrieve information.

There is a monthlyTechnical Working Group (TWG) SWDs. The TWG is a forum where SWDs can participate in discussion with ATO development staff about current and planned matters that affect the development of the PLS. Meetings are by phone (although the TWG met face-to-face on 19 November 2015) and minutes are available from the SIPO website.

Specific responses

ID / Action Item / Response
1 / Increase communication to ensure the Software Developer Industry is overtly kept informed of progress and challenges including: / The ATO is committed to ensuring clear communication channels are open between the ATO and the SWD’s. At present the intranet site is being reconstructed, the intention is to deliver a site that is user friendly, offering SWD’s the most up to date information and easy to read facts and figures, presented using visual aids such as graphs. The monthly Technical Working Group (TWG) including face to face meetings, training sessions and many partnership events all offer two way communications enabling SWD’s to keep informed, understand challenges faced by both sides and ask questions when required.
7 / What services can industry expect during Christmas shut down period? / Normal SBR1 and SBR2 production and EVTE services will be available except for the following scheduled maintenance windows:
  • 23:00 AEDT on the 13/11/2015 until 18:00 AEDT on the 15/11/2015
  • 23:00 AEDT on the 20/11/2015 until 06:00 AEDT on the 23/11/2015
  • 23:00 AEDT on the 4/12/2015 until 23:00 AEDT on the 5/12/2015
  • 23:00 AEDT on the 11/12/2015 until 06:00 AEDT on the 14/12/2015
  • 23:00 AEDT on the 25/12/2015 until 06:00 AEDT on the 29/12/2015

9 / A need to communicate what happens when data centre has outages / System outages for SBR1/2 EVTE and Production, both planned and unplanned are published by the SBR service desk.
Featured on this page is a link to subscribe to receive via email advice of updates to this page.
29 / Ensure that there is a consistent communication protocol in the program, as externals are confused to where information will be provided and which source to look for the information. This includes the responsible team and the correct source (SBR site, SIPO, Lets Talk, TWG, GovDex) to receive the information. / The site is currently undergoing a redesign, the plan is to provide a one-stop shop site stylewhere information regarding SWDs will be located or at a minimum will provide access to other sites information.

T-05: Artefacts

At the SWD meeting, held in Canberra on 9 and 10 September, Chris Thorne gave a presentation about the SBR Implementation. Chris emphasised the need for continuous improvement. We are working hard to improve access to specifications and documentation, to improve the quality of code through the implementation of the ESR and to improve the quality and effectiveness of the conformance tests.

Specific responses

ID / Action Item / Response
13 / Explore opportunities to improve access to downloading specs - a previous service was a document Cart On the Software Dev homepage - ATO currently reviewing websites and we will co-design with Industry / Mick Ferrisaddressed Service registry and the changes made to release notes during the annual ‘ATO- SwD Partnership event- Services for Tax Practitioners’ gathering (9-10 September). During his presentation, Mickhighlighted the Key initiatives underway that included SBR message packaging and release notes, advising that ATO forms are now published to SBR.gov in zip files with release notes. A spreadsheet linking all of the packages will be available via the SBR homepage.
14 / Need to understand where conformance test documents need to be housed - SBR website or can it also be on ATO website? ATO to explore with SBR / Conformance test documents are housed in the SBR share file, however only registered developers can access this site. Test documents are only provided in a closed site due to keystore details provided.
15 / Explore ongoing use and effectiveness of schematrons as having a system that includes validations requirements within the document would be more efficient? / Point of discussionduring September ATO- SWD Partnership event- Services for Tax Practitioners’ gathering, developers advised they were open to options being offered. Further consultation during TWG conversation and at the recent Face to face TWG meeting and in the ESR updates.
16 / Explore use of transformation engines as free resource for ease of XBRL development. / Identified as a design issue, Brian Shepherd to address. We will consult about it at the TWG.
21 / Opportunity to Improve the message structure in tables by adding extra columns - a possible co-design process? / Topic covered at the recent face-to-face TWG – Melbourne 19 November. Notes and presentation available via SIPO site on the TWG page.
24 / ATO to consult with BRR explore opportunities to improve SBR error messaging (Please note the ATO currently rewording messaging in EVTE and Production - it will be an evolving CI process) / Discussion to be undertaken at TWG, open channels to work with external developers on the messages that are causing issues. Updates have been made to the message repository – message to be given to developers via the face to face discussion held Melbourne 19 November, notes will be available via SIPO site.
32 / Ensure that the error messages in the Error Message Repository (EMR) are up to date / The EMR is now published with each delivery of the message implementation guide (MIG). The latest EMR will always contain the latest set of messages which will be aligned to each MIG release.
33 / Review the implementation of XBRL against XML in specific cases such as the implementation of pre-fill data. / This is a long-termrequirement;however, this was discussed at the recent Face to face TWG held in Melbourne 19 November. Updates available via SIPO site.
34.2 / Investigate if AM functionality can be made directly available to external developers, via either web services or API's for consumption. / Item is again a long term requirement, however as with most of the topics in this area the recent face to face TWG provided the opportunity to discuss/present this topic with notes from this meeting available via SIPO site

T-06: Schedules

Summary

Each ATO project, including PLS and TT16, will be described by a “plan on a page”. These plans are made available to the TWG and are available on the SIPO website. The plans are subject to change as we reflect our agile development approach and SWD take-up requirements.

Specific responses

ID / Action Item / Response
22 / ATO to explore sharing production schedules plan on a page through TWG. / Provide a copy of the production schedules/plan on a page, to be provided via TWG

T-07:Education and support

Summary

We are committed to supporting SWDs through design, development and implementation of their products. In topic T-05 (Artefacts) we have stated how we are improving the quality of the artefacts we publish or provide. In addition, we will provide (and have done so on several occasions) resources on-site with SWDs to ensure that interoperability and other development issues can be resolved quickly.

The On-boarding Team and the Account Management function are key resources in ensuring that any and all barriers to take-up of ATO services are removed. The recent gateway review commented on the improvements we have made in the area of relationship management and we will continue to build on that improvement.

To support the Account Managers, we have improved the incident and query management processes. This is covered in topic T-09 (Performance).

A number of training sessions are currently in the planning stage. These sessions will be based around topics that have been raised by SWDs, or that we identify, as being useful for a training-based approach. Initial training sessions are schedule for 4, 10 and 11 December.

Specific responses

ID / Action item / Response
2 / Describe the intention of EVTE -(it is not a performance testing environment but connectivity/conformance testing) / The purpose of the External Vendor Test Environment (EVTE) is to provide an integrated test environment for developers to undertake system testing prior to self-certification via use of the Conformance Suite. Brian Shepherd presented ‘EVTE Environment’ an overview and status at the eCommerce Software Developer (SWD) Technical Working Group (TWG), 6 August 2015. Previously presentations explaining Testing and EVTE have been given at the Boathouse, including ‘eCommerce Testing – a walkthrough of testing in/and the EVTE by Paul Dwyer (link to presentation).
30 / Advise the external developers the test case set that has been used for the timing metrics, so they are able to do a comparison. / We picked 5 single transactions (IITR Lodge, Client Relationship Update, FBT Lodge, FTER Lodge, AS Lodge, Request AS Client Report) and 5 Batch/Bulk transactions (Get AS Client Report, Bulk FTER Lodge, Bulk CTR Lodge, Bulk Client Details Update, Retrieve FVS Register). These transactions were chosen because each covers a different integration pattern and a different transaction path through the system. These transactions are suitable for monitoring purposes because with them we can ‘hit’/check the majority of technical components in the eBMS3 platform. They are NOT based on formal conformance suite test scenarios at the moment. However, we intend to derive them from ‘formal’ conformance suite scenarios in the future.
The above transactions are emitted from a ‘synthetic monitoring agent’, which for defined intervals (i.e. every 15 minutes) will loop through the set of configured scenarios and for each scenario will:
  1. Send a transaction (e.g. IITR Lodge) to EVTE2
  2. Check the response from EVTE2 for
  1. Functional correctness: by comparing the actual response content with expected response
  2. Response time: by comparing the received response time with the send time of the request
  1. Update the monitoring database located in a cloud based database (Bluemix) with transaction status (Pass/Fail) and response time.
  2. The results of the monitoring will then get refreshed on the Bluemix monitoring solution (i.e. the URL above)

31 / Obtain clearance to open the Amazon cloud EVTE environment to all developers / Topic presented at 19 November face to face TWG, notes and presentation available on TWG site via SIPO
35 / What are the support expectations of EVTE for external developers? / Short description linking through to TWG EVTE presentation and EVTE presentation
25 / A specific request is made of ELS developers to ensure that they advise the ATO of ANY issues with EBMS client so they can be raised with IBM / Procedure already in place, SBR service desk contacts Danielle’s team when an incident is raised that relates to the client, these are filtered and passed onto IBM for resolution
26 / Provide technical training sessions for developers on key system technologies / Duplicate of question/answer for question 20
27 / Provide a support desk contact for MYOB (Jo Curtis) / Completed
34.1 / Improve the external developers understanding of Access Manager (AM) services and functions / Request was sent to AM, topic was covered at recent face to face TWG discussion and has been marked as a potential topic for upcoming proposed training sessions (4, 10 &11 December)

T-08: Scope

Summary

While the scope of the Practitioner Lodgment Service project and its services are well defined, there are a number of points of detailed clarification that have been raised.

Specific responses

ID / Action item / Response
3 / What forms will have the SBR wrapper – all forms connectivity/conformance testing) / Topic presented at Face-to-Face TWG meeting, Melbourne 19 November, all notes from this event available via TWG site on SIPO.
The ato.gov.au site is currently providing incorrect information and this site is being updated to represent latest updates.
19 / SBR tagging in PDF forms to make mapping easier (TT16 for key forms with paper versions) introduce SBR tagging in TT16 / This was addressed during the face-to-face TWG (18 November 2015): the Message Structure Table provides the ELS tag.
We accept that we will deliver SBR tags in PDF forms in future releases.
28.1 / Carry out a gap analysis on the SBR implementation of ELS. This will ensure forms and reports are capable of being provided for externals to match existing system / We have undertaken a gap analysis. We will review this at a future TWG.
28.2 / Undertake a review of the Client Update (CU) content and behaviour and compare against ELS functions / As above, audit completed and currently under internal review before being posted.

20 / Opportunity to support SWDs in educating new staff on complexities of designing for SBR and XBRL (in partnership with ABSIA) / Service to be on a case-to-case basis.
Discussion at recent Face to face TWG and is a potential topic for proposed training session (4,1011 December)
23 / ATO to provide a list of errors available to developers and agents through closed collaboration group on SWD Community page / Incident List (this will be published by SIPO, beginning 30 November) – this is currently being constructed into a plain English format, to be made available via website.
A list was made available to the 19 November 2015 TWG and will be published in their minutes. We will begin regular (two-weekly) updates of the plain English list starting w/b 6 December 2015.

T-09: Performance