ABBYY PRESENTS AN AUTOMATIC TAX RETURN ENTRY WORKSTATION BASED ON ABBYY FINE READER HANDPRINT

The workstation installed at Information Processing Centre of Russian Federal Tax Service has just achieved its planned output - 30 000 forms per day

May 25th, 1999. ù At the DOCFLOW 99 exhibition-conference ABBYY presented its new complex workstation for automatic tax return form entry and processing. The workstation, based on ABBYY FineReader Handprint technology, has been developed as a part of a joint project of ABBYY and Tax Collection Service of Russian Federation.

Machine-readable tax return forms made their first appearance in Russia in autumn 1997. ABBYY staff has been integral to their development. At the beginning of 1999 an automatic tax return entry workstation has been installed at the Information Collection Center of Moscow Tax Collection Department #39, where it has been functioning successfully ever since.

The complex workstation comprises: a scanning workstation, 8 recognition workstations, 24 verification workstations and an administrator workstation. Scanning is performed by a Banctec S-185 scanner, which effectively scans more than 150 pages per minute. Recognition workstations featuring ABBYY FineReader Handprint system are installed on Pentium II 300 MHz computers. The information collected is verified on verification workstations, each workstation comprising a Pentium 166 MHz computer and ABBYY FineReader Handprint system. Administration is performed on a Pentium 166 MHz computer; the network server is installed on a 2xPentium MMX 200 MHz computer.

This complex workstation functions as follows. First, the Center sorts out the tax return forms provided by local Moscow tax collection departments. The forms which cannot be entered automatically (some 1% of overall form bulk), are separated and redirected to manual input department, all the rest are scanned on a scanning workstation. The scanned form images are recognized and directed to verification workstations, where they are verified and then entered into the tax return database. For the most part the work is automated and human-free.

Verification is the only point where overall system productivity is affected by human productivity. ABBYY staff has been much concerned by this issue, and so developed a solution û a special automatic verification workstation. The unique know-how called ôgroup verificationö patented and developed by ABBYY mightily increases the system productivity (the system now works 7-8 times faster), while special automatic control rules provide a nearly error-free functioning.

As the number of tax return forms increases yearly, so the usual manual procedure would have required employment of more and more tax collection officers to process them. Now, the automatic tax return form entry and centralized information collection and storage will increase the overall sum of collected taxes while also lowering the cost of tax information processing. An example û the usual manual procedure allowed for 30-35 tax return forms per day to be entered by an operator, while the automatic workstation allows for 650 tax return form per day per operator. The overall productivity of the complex automatic workstation installed at the Moscow centre is, as of now, 30 000 forms per day (two complex workstation, two shifts, 24 operators).

½The workstation developed in a joint project of our department and ABBYY Software House proves its worth in a most striking manner when we take into consideration the seasonal aspect of tax return processing works, ù says Igor Popov, the chief of Moscow Tax Collection Department #39, the Data Processing Centre of the Moscow Federal Tax Service. ù If we tried to enter some 4 000 000 forms in 120 days manually, we would have to employ more than 1000 professional typists and provide each of them with a workstation û a whole hall of some 6000 square meters. And even if we succeeded at that, what we would have done with that many people during the rest 8 months of the year, when there is no work for them?╗

Aram Pakhchanian, senior manager of corporate projects and technology integration group of ABBYY, says: ½We consider our joint project with the Russian Federal Tax Service as one of the greatest importance. We acquired some priceless experience, we have understood the real value of complex methods. An example û if we havenÆt been directly involved in the development of machine-readable tax return form, as well as technologies related to their collection, storage and transport, then the introduction of automatic tax return form input would have been immensely more complicated, if at all possible. But now, by using of FineReader Handprint, The Russian Federal Tax service became one of the first tax services of the world to perform real mass automatic tax return form input╗.

For detailed information please contact:

ABBYY. Ph. No. 263-6658, fax 263-6278, http://www.abbyy.ru, Alena Abramenko, alena@abbyy.ru

ABBYY (BIT Software) is one of the leading Russian software developers; its main products are in fields of linguistics, semantics, text processing and optical character recognition. In 1997 the DATOR agency awarded ABBYY the title of ôthe most professional software developer in Russiaö.

ABBYY products: OCR FINE READER series, providing automated input of texts, tables, forms, questionaries; an ICR FINE READER HANDPRINT system providing automated input of forms filled in in capital letters by hand, supports four languages; FINE READER BANK system, providing automated entry of payment orders; an SDK FINE READER TOOLKIT, providing possibilities to integrate OCR-technologies in other systems; a spellchecker LINGVO CORRECTOR, supports 12 languages; an electronic english-russian russian-english dictionary system LINGVO; a full-text search system LINGVO FULLTEXT RETRIEVAL, an indexing and search system LINGVO INTERNET INDEX SERVER etc.