How Governments Can Utilize the Power of Modern Business Intelligence

How Governments Can Utilize the Power of Modern Business Intelligence

We are currently living in unprecedented times—and you don’t need a blog to tell you that. COVID-19 spread rates continue to spike. Political upheaval keeps rearing its ugly head, and every news report that isn’t about the pandemic or politics recounts yet another hurricane, wildfire, or earthquake. 

Tasked with solving all these problems and more, national, state, and local government agencies must work together—now more than ever—to address the crisis of the day. They must be able to easily share and disseminate action-facing data analyses and reports. And they must do so in a way that facilitates reasonable response from private stakeholder and companies. Our lives literally depend on seamless governmental cooperation.

Though a world populated by an interrelated slate of cooperative, connected, and efficient governments may only be a utopian dream, many public institutions leverage the power of modern business intelligence (BI) tools to drive a higher elevation of performance and interagency synergy. Sadly, many agencies are still mired in outdated, slow, and clunky legacy BI systems.

When crisis situations are measured in seconds, governments can’t afford to wait hours or days for insightful data reports. In addition, costly legacy tools make compliance reporting expensive and frustrating. This leads to:

  • Higher costs, more downtime, and more staff hours
  • Poor customer service from agencies
  • Loss of taxpayer confidence
  • Companies also face difficulties when it comes to generating required reports for government agencies such as the IRS—a tangled mess of legacy systems can’t even “speak the same language”

Modern BI platforms, such as Pixel Perfect, leverage the power of the Tableau dashboard, creating reporting solutions that keep government agencies on task and on time. 

[Are you struggling to create Tableau reports that best display your company's  KPIs? Save time with Pixel Perfect.]

Use Cases

As mentioned in our recent healthcare post, any attempt to blog about the thousands of reporting requirements government agencies generate is like trying to pour the ocean into a thimble, However, as we discuss the power of next-level BI tools, we can drill down into some of the more common use cases, such as:

  • Form 1042-S is an IRS tax form. It covers mandatory U.S. income tax filings for a foreign person’s source income in the United States. Every nonresident alien individual, nonresident alien fiduciary, and foreign corporation with such income must file a U.S. income tax return. Known as one of the most difficult forms to file electronically, this form can generate issues including incorrect codes, email errors, and inaccurate formats—and all files must be in standard ASCII code. 
  • Form 1099 is known as an “information return” form. It records income received from any entity or person other than an employer. The form has very specific guidelines—if someone files more than 250 Form 1099s, they are required to file them electronically with the IRS in a specific format. If they have less than 250 to file, they must file paper copies instead, and the filer must send a copy of Form 1096 as well.
  • W-2 is the best known tax form besides the 1040. It’s the form anxious employees wait to receive every year to find out what the damage is going to be or to celebrate a fat refund. For employers, it’s a mandatory tax filing and records how much in taxes has been withheld from paychecks throughout the calendar year. Consisting of six forms total, this extremely detailed report must be completed and mailed out to each employee, and it must be completed by a certain date. Upon receiving the W-2, employees face a deadline of about two months to file their returns.
  • W-4 is the lesser known of the “W” forms, but every new employee fills one out upon being hired. Also known as the Employee’s Withholding Certificate, this form provides employers with information as to how much tax they must withhold from an employee’s paycheck. The employer is then required to send the amount withheld to the IRS, along with the employee’s name and Social Security number. Think of it as the IRS’s “Show me the money!” form.

With such a vast array of reports and forms to create, maintain, and distribute, employers must rush to generate them in a timely and accurate manner or face the wrath of the IRS in the form of penalties. These forms and reports must be at scale—a complicated, time-consuming, and difficult proposition for a legacy BI system.

Pixel Perfect may not be able to bring government agencies and stakeholders together in perfect peace and harmony. However, Pixel Perfect does bring the peace of mind that comes with knowing that your governmental reporting requirements are powered by a highly customizable reporting solution that seamlessly complements Tableau’s existing capabilities. 

Pixel Perfect facilitates the development of well-formatted, print-ready reports at scale when required. Users easily create pre-populated, perfectly formatted, print-ready reports at the click of a button from within your Tableau dashboard. Take the next step to bring some measure of harmony to your government relationships. Try a free demo of Pixel Perfect today. 

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