HMRC have asked us to share the July 2019 update.

“Agent Forum (AF)

As at the end of June 2019 the Forum has over 1189 Agent subscribers, up 24 since the last progress report. And 153 HMRC staff. We continue to both build our Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) capability, recruiting from across HMRC to improve issue resolution responses and on the introduction of an Agent Forum platform upgrade. We are currently looking at Penetration Testing (Pentest) to ensure that all Community Forums are fully protected from hacking. Confirmation of go live date will be confirmed once testing complete. Other performance metrics include over 119k views (up 9k), 5081 posted messages (up 558) on 1021 current topics (Up 97), all since July 2017; which are moderated daily with appropriate responses given, as determined by subject matter, related traffic generated and referrals provided by line of business.

Our priority after delivering issue resolutions to agent enquiries, continues to be enlisting formal internal HMRC SME engagements and focusing on upgrading the existing platform, which is being developed as an Agile project. The approved platform is Microsoft Dynamics. We are now entering the final commissioning stages of associated installation, training and data migration activities.

We are still publishing our weekly digest email to all registered Agent forum members. It summarises traffic posted on the forum during the previous 7 days, with dedicated links to specific issues raised. System metrics show it continues to significantly increased agent engagement and forum views.

We continue to work closely with the Issues Overview Group (IOG) on widespread queries and have held several telecons in respect of Class 2 NI. A key responsibility of the IOG group is to jointly determine what the ‘widespread’ issues priority classification should be for earliest resolution.

The Digital Customer Support Services (DCSS) Agent Team is staffed by a Service Manager and 2.5 FTE Issues Resolution Managers (IRMs), who moderate and run the forum.”

END OF HMRC UPDATE