This article is written by Jennifer M. Miller, PhD in Public Policy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Apolitical Insider Fellow. The article has been edited by Salman Samad, Manager, Enterprise Architecture at the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) and Apolitical Insider Fellow.

You have probably heard the advice not to change the tyres while the bus is moving. That is, avoid making major changes while operations are moving full speed ahead.

Code for America’s GetYourRefund pilot programme with Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) changed and grew rapidly in response to Covid-19. As the partnership evolved, the project’s training team learned that not only would the “bus” be in motion while they worked, but it would also welcome on board ten times as many passengers as previously expected.

Nonprofits partner for pilot programme

In early 2020, the US-based civic technology nonprofit Code for America was gearing up to launch the GetYourRefund pilot programme in partnership with VITA.

This pilot, which would introduce a free online income tax filing service, was planned in partnership with four local VITA sites. The pilot programme’s ambitious goal was to help 5,000 tax filers by the April 15th tax filing deadline.

Each year, VITA’s volunteers, certified by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), help thousands of low-income, disabled, senior-citizen and limited-English proficiency clients through the complex process of filing income taxes. Because of tax withholding from wages and the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) — a safety net programme administered through the tax system — filing income taxes often puts a significant lump sum into the hands of low-income households.

Historically, VITA’s process has been low-tech and high-touch. Clients would typically meet volunteers at community centres, sometimes with folders full of finance and identity documents.

The online and mobile-friendly GetYourRefund service would allow the pilot VITA sites to expand their services to help clients through a website, online chat and telephone contacts. The service would allow VITA’s clients to answer a series of household and income questions online, then connect with a VITA tax preparer to complete their return.

As a pilot programme, it was understood that feedback and refinements to the technology would be ongoing throughout the tax season.

And then Covid hit

The Covid-19 pandemic disrupted the well-established routines of income tax filing season.

  • With IRS offices closed, processing of paper tax returns was on hold. The tax filing deadline was extended from April to July 15th, 2020. The federal government announced that economic stimulus payments would be disbursed through the tax system.

  • VITA was forced to sharply curtail their in-person volunteer tax assistance as the health risks to volunteers and clients were too great.

  • Widespread shutdowns sparked mass unemployment and financial strain.

In response, Code for America and VITA transformed their partnership across multiple dimensions. Code for America offered to bring any VITA partner organisation into the GetYourRefund programme. They also agreed to offer centralised support for taxpayers in locations with no participating VITA partner. The partners extended their timeline to meet the new tax deadline, while also supporting taxpayers’ claims for stimulus payments.

With the Covid-19 pandemic limiting movement and gatherings, the project was being carried out by a virtual team made up of staff, contractors and volunteers scattered across the US

The original training plan to onboard four VITA partner organisations for the pilot programme relied on an initial site visit in addition to ongoing video-conference feedback and training sessions led by Code for America core project team members. VITA partner organisations would then take responsibility for training their own site’s volunteers.

With the expansion of GetYourRefund, this training model would stretch the core team too thin. As an interim process when more VITA partners adopted GetYourRefund, recordings of the hour-long video-conferences were posted online along with other training documents. The training challenge became especially clear with the realisation that partners would need to retrain as processes changed and new functions were added to the software.

A modular training solution

The training team instead opted to prepare a playlist of brief video training modules that could be accessed on demand. The playlist included some modules on general topics about the partnership and the software relevant to any VITA volunteer using GetYourRefund. Other modules matched to the roles typically staffed at each VITA site, such as intake specialist, tax preparer and quality reviewer.

With the Covid-19 pandemic limiting movement and gatherings, the project was being carried out by a virtual team made up of staff, contractors and volunteers scattered across the US. The volunteers on the training team needed a simple way to prepare the videos.

By the July 15th tax deadline, GetYourRefund had onboarded 46 VITA partner organisations and supported over 10,600 clients in filing online tax returns and claims for economic stimulus payments

The team started with slides that had been used to train the original four partner organisations. After aligning topics with roles and learning outcomes, they recorded audio narration in PowerPoint and then published the modules to video. Early feedback from a newly onboarded VITA partner positively stated: “Your training videos are wonderful”!

By early June, developers had added new functions to the GetYourRefund service. Rae Pilarski, Senior Director of Financial Wellness Initiatives at United Way of Tucson and Southern Arizona, an original pilot VITA partner site and a core training team member, reviewed each of the nine video modules. Team members updated images, text, and audio only on those slides where functions or processes had changed. Then they easily saved and uploaded the revised videos. VITA partner volunteers now had on-demand access to updated training.

Sowing the seeds for next year’s season

By the July 15th tax deadline, GetYourRefund had onboarded 46 VITA partner organisations and supported over 10,600 clients in filing online tax returns and claims for economic stimulus payments. Clients have claimed an estimated $32 million in refunds!

Looking ahead to next year’s tax season, Andreas Vandris, the project’s team leader for training, expects that the existing training modules will be easy to review and adapt to technical and process changes for future versions of GetYourRefund.

Next time you are thinking about hosting a lengthy training video-conference, consider whether brief, focused modules available on demand and easily updated might better meet the audience’s needs. — Jennifer M. Miller

(Picture credit: Unsplash)