A four-month partnership between a state department and an Albuquerque data company has resulted in national award recognition.
The New Mexico Taxation and Revenue Department (TRD) announced June 11 it was awarded the Innovation and Excellence in Tax Administration Award by the Federation of Tax Administrators.
That award recognition comes from a new automated oil and gas compliance tracker that TRD developed alongside RS21, an Albuquerque-based data and analytics company.
Katie Webster, RS21's chief solutions architect, said the department contacted RS21 earlier this year regarding what she described as a "pain point" involving the department's tracking of oil and gas revenue data from two other state agencies and the federal government. Much of that data was being managed manually, which was often a time-consuming process, Webster said.
"They really wanted to partner with us to help mitigate some of those challenges and drive innovation," she said. "So, we worked very closely with them to explore what the best solution could be and iterate on that for them."
That solution turned into an automated dashboard for TRD to process, analyze and present oil and gas revenue data. The tool involves back-end automation of revenue data processing, programming to analyze that data and then a pair of front-end dashboards to present the processed and analyzed data.
Stephanie Schardin Clarke, TRD secretary, said in a statement the dashboard's award recognition "is one of those moments where we get to say we are working smarter and more efficiently to better serve New Mexico."
It took about four months to develop, Webster said, from January through April of this year. A three-person team developed the dashboard — Webster, Darold Ross, a project manager at RS21 and Morgan Walker, RS21's analytics team lead who Webster said spearheaded much of the dashboard's development.
This was RS21's first work with TRD, Webster said. She added the data company plans to continue working with the department going forward.
"Looking at what we were able to do in just four months, I think we're really going to be able to partner with them to really drive innovation in that longer timeframe," Webster said.
RS21 has ongoing work with several other customers currently and close to another dozen projects "ready to kick off," Webster said. It's collaborated with other state departments, including the Department of Workforce Solutions and the Early Childhood Education and Care Department, as well.
The company's work with TRD, in particular, falls under an Information Technology Professional Services contract between RS21 and the State of New Mexico, awarded to the company in March. The four-year contract provides a "streamlined" procurement process for state agencies, local governments and public institutions to set up services with RS21 through purchase agreements.
