Fiscus (software)
FISCUS ( Federal Integrated Standardized Computer-Assisted Tax System ) is software for the public sector that has never been fully developed . It was intended as uniform software for the approximately 650 tax offices in the federal states of the Federal Republic of Germany. Until the beginning of 2006, the development costs amounted to around 400 million euros with a development time of thirteen years and without delivering a usable result.
The beginnings of the FISCUS project
The development of FISCUS began in 1993 after the federal states, with the participation of the federal government, agreed on the development of a common, nationwide uniform software for the tax offices. With this agreement one wanted to solve several problems at once.
- The problem of parallel development: Many federal states developed their own software solutions for the same problems. This was recognized as an unnecessary expense and should be solved by a uniform system developed based on the division of labor.
- The problem of complexity: The old systems have been adapted to the new tax laws over the years and their complexity has continued to grow. There was fear that one day this complexity would no longer be mastered (software crisis) and, as a result, the legislative requirements of the Bundestag and the state parliaments could no longer be met. They didn't want to let it get that far.
The new development should take place according to the state of software engineering at the time, with structured development methodologies and replace the different systems in the countries. SEtec (software engineering technology) from the Munich software and consulting company Softlab was used. After the first extensive analyzes, one of the first development projects under FISCUS started in North Rhine-Westphalia with "Enforcement".
With the ever greater acceptance and spread of object-orientation, the question arose for FISCUS in the mid-1990s as to whether a change should be made from structured development to object-oriented development. By the time the decision was made, the "Enforcement" project had progressed so far that this development team could continue developing with the structured development paradigm. This decoupled this team from the further FISCUS development, but the implemented system is now in use in several federal states.
The object-oriented technology opened up new possibilities. So-called frameworks could be used. This is prefabricated, usually purchased software into which the self-written software is integrated. Frameworks offer standard solutions for standard problems, without development work in your own project. FISCUS decided to use the "San Francisco" framework from IBM. IBM's licensing policy was very beneficial to the public administration, as no license fees were incurred during software development. Only when the finished products were used in the tax offices would money flow.
But FISCUS wanted more. So there was a team of developers who developed another framework, the so-called "application framework", based on "San Francisco". This application framework was the development basis for the development teams spread across Germany. But developing such a complex software architecture with distributed teams turned out to be more difficult than originally hoped. In addition, Java technology was still in its infancy and did not do what was expected of it. The project progressed considerably more slowly than planned and the criticism of FISCUS grew.
In addition, IBM found that you can't make money with frameworks like "San Francisco" and stopped further development. This deprived the FISCUS project of a technological basis and since the software was made available by IBM free of charge, there were no obligations to FISCUS.
Foundation of fiscus GmbH
After FISCUS did not deliver any sustainable results up to the year 2000, the finance ministers decided to restart, but without the Free State of Bavaria. Instead, the Free State of Bavaria started its own project with EOSS , in which the software from the 1970s was to be further developed in an evolutionary manner. An essential part of the restart of FISCUS was the founding of the private-sector fiscus GmbH based in Bonn ( building of the press and information office of the federal government ) in April 2001. The GmbH's staff - especially the executives - were predominantly won over on the open labor market. It was also reinforced in terms of personnel by administrative clerks and civil servants who had been retrained to become programmers. The involvement of the employees employed in the federal and state tax administrations up to this point was necessary in order to bring tax law know-how to fiscus GmbH.
By 2004 fiscus GmbH had completed several applications and test versions: the online master data query (OSA), real estate transfer tax (GrESt) and fine proceedings and criminal matters (BuStra). However, the development of the essential core procedures (income tax, sales tax, tax collection, etc.) lagged far behind expectations. Therefore, the audit offices also increasingly criticized the project. Among other things, the Berlin State Audit Office objected to the FISCUS project several times between 2000 and 2004.
Liquidation of fiscus GmbH
Against this background, the Finance Ministers' Conference (FMK) decided on July 19, 2005 to liquidate (dissolve) fiscus GmbH and set up the new KONSENS project. In the KONSENS project, the FISCUS and EOSS projects were merged, so that the state of Bavaria is again involved in the joint software development.
A management buy-out planned in advance of the liquidation failed in mid-September 2005. The company liquidation therefore began on October 1, 2005.
The civil servants and former administrative employees (around 40) employed by fiscus GmbH at the time of the liquidation almost without exception returned to their main offices. The remaining employees found on the free labor market (around 150) were fired.
The liquidation was completed with the deletion from the commercial register on June 30, 2008.
KONSENS as the successor to FISCUS
The follow-up project to FISCUS is KONSENS ( coordinated new software development of the tax administration ). The programs currently in use in the federal states should form the basis. The programs that are currently running are to be standardized. The software developed by the State of North Rhine-Westphalia play a special role in the so-called EOSS ( evolutionary-oriented tax software ) network.
Within KONSENS , the five largest federal states (Bavaria, North Rhine-Westphalia, Lower Saxony, Baden-Württemberg and Hesse) want to lead the development of the new nationwide uniform software for all states. The federal government is no longer actively involved in this development.
swell
- ↑ Report of the Federal Audit Office to the German Bundestag, printed matter 17/8429 ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Page 15 f
- ↑ State of development of FISCUS in 2001 ( Memento from July 7, 2003 in the Internet Archive ) (PDF; 22 kB), page 4 point d)
- ↑ iProDeveloper - page for IBM developers ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Description of the integration of the framework in English.
