10 September 2007 – ECORYS has successfully completed the Strategic Planning and Change Management Project for the Bulgarian National Revenue Agency (NRA). With this project ECORYS supported the process of organisational establishment and development of NRA in its first years of existence as a separate institution.

In 2004 the Bulgarian government decided to establish a National Revenue Agency (NRA) in order to answer the needs for further progress with public sector reforms aimed at keeping Bulgaria’s fiscal policy on a sound footing over the medium term. In its reform efforts Bulgaria has been supported by a number of international institutions. The World Bank Revenue Administration Reform Project (RARP) was launched to help in two ways:

• Make the revenue administration system more transparent and fast, which will result in savings in time and money for taxpayers. This will in turn result in improved and simplified procedures that will substantially cut the private sector overhead time;
• Finance the implementation of a state-of-the-art technology and efficient internal organisation within the revenue administration in order to have a faster and a high quality service to customers.

Within the frame of RARP a sub-project named Strategic Planning and Change Management was initiated by the World Bank to support the entire process of organisational establishment and development of NRA in its first years of existence as a separate institution. ECORYS Netherlands has successfully carried out this project in the period June 2005-June 2007. ECORYS team has helped NRA in the following areas:

• Development of an Integration Plan to support the integration of the General Tax Directorate (GTD) and Collection function of the National Social Security Institute (NSSI) into the newly established National Revenue Agency.
• Building up of an integrated system for strategic and operational planning of all activities of the NRA 
• Implementation of a planning system at all levels.
• Planning and management of projects and sub projects related to the strategic programme for modernisation.
• Development of an effective strategy for change management and plan for its implementation and support for its realisation.
• Implementation of a change management process.

Through a series of planned and coordinated activities the ECORYS team transferred knowledge and experience to a significant part of the staff of the Agency by applying modern practices in the context of substantial changes in the organisation. Especially beneficial was the co-operation between the project team and the management and staff of the Strategic Planning and Change Management Department (SPCMD) that alongside the project has developed into an important organisational unit within NRA. SPCMD is now capable of designing and carrying out complex and large-scale organisational development projects within NRA. The pilot implementation of the recent strategic planning process in which different levels of NRA management and staff has been involved is an important achievement for the organisation. This and other organisational development tools that were adopted during the lifetime of the project such as Action Learning Groups Programme, planning and performance assessment, regular strategic sessions for top management, project management, etc. make the Bulgarian National Revenue Agency one of the most organisationally advanced public bodies in the country. The support of the top management of the Agency has played essential role in stimulating the modernisation of the institution. In such environment, despite the challenging tasks the project team has faced, we feel we fulfilled our mission as most of our recommendations have been taken on board of the NRA.

For more information:

Julia Djarova
T 0031 10 453 86 15
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Lazar Bazlyankov
T 00359 2 981 60 32
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