How A Unified Data Platform Transformed Tax Operations For A Government Agency

Modernizing manual tax processes, setting up scalable, analytics-driven operations

A national public tax sector agency was looking to modernize its IT systems and infrastructure which hinged on an older, on-premise platform.

The agency wanted to streamline its data management and build a unified data platform (UDP) – a shift that would make it easier to manage data centrally, improve collaboration between teams, reduce duplication of effort and support faster decision-making. It also had the potential to lower operating costs over time by reducing reliance on legacy systems.

• The tax agency aimed to automate key processes, including tax calculations, and consolidate siloed datasets into a unified repository.
• The solution needed to perform consistently during peak periods – such as tax filing seasons – through elastic resource allocation that could scale with fluctuating workloads.
• Additionally, the agency wanted to provide advanced insights to its users through AI/ML tools, while implementing strict data access controls. This would ensure different user groups (e.g., auditors and analysts) could only view relevant reports.
• A third requirement focused on automating compliance reporting. Generating recurring reports like monthly CT returns involved significant manual effort.
• Automating these processes using scheduled data pipelines, pre-configured to output in approved formats, would streamline operations and reduce error rates.

Cloud Kinetics was selected to modernize the infrastructure and build a unified data foundation that would help to power business-ready AI/BI use cases – scalably, securely and without operational disruption.

Azure-based unified data platform enhances analytics & automation capability

To support modern analytics and reporting for taxation, a unified data platform (UDP) was built on an Azure-based Government Commercial Cloud (GCC) environment.

Designed to handle structured, unstructured, and semi-structured data, the new UDP would centralize data processing across multiple tax domains – including Individual Income Tax (IIT), Property Tax (PT) and Stamp Duty (SD). The platform would serve as a single source of truth for analytics, reporting, archiving and system integration, enabling data-driven decision-making at scale.

As part of the implementation, Cloud Kinetics worked closely with stakeholders across departments to capture detailed requirements, reporting needs and use cases tied to each tax stream. These inputs formed the basis for a scalable, purpose-built data modernization roadmap.

The engagement extended to:

• Cloud Infrastructure Setup: Designed and deployed foundational Azure infrastructure on the GCC platform in line with government security and architecture requirements.
• Design: Data model designing for UDP, ETL and data validation, quality check and classification policies, data tagging and access control policies, report formats and MLOps.
• Lakehouse Architecture Implementation: Built a unified data platform using Azure Synapse Analytics, Azure Data Lake Storage, and supporting services to accommodate diverse data types and analytical use cases.
• Metadata-Driven Data Ingestion Layer: Developed custom frameworks leveraging Azure Data Factory and Synapse Notebooks for seamless, validated ingestion of raw data from on-premises systems.
• Data Engineering Pipelines & Processing: Established end-to-end pipelines for ingesting, transforming and serving data analytics for various tax types. Implemented data governance, data classification, data quality checks as part of ingestion, ETL and pipelines.
• Data Visualization: Designed capability to build reports and dashboards along with data mart and presentation layer
• Trainings: Business users trained for self-service; technical teams to manage platform and data administration

The unified data platform on Azure, in turn, powered the following AI/BI use cases:

Creating a data-powered tax administration

With this newly modernized and automated data ecosystem, the tax agency is poised to be more agile and efficient. The successful implementation of the Unified Data Platform (UDP) has improved the tax analytics and reporting capabilities.

Cloud Kinetics will continue to support the agency with full IT infrastructure management, 24/7 helpdesk support, and ITSM implementation, all under stringent security and compliance standards. This data modernization journey and ongoing partnership is building a strong foundation for a tax system ready to meet future demands.