Government Technology - September 2007 - (Page 32)

29 C O N T I N U E D F R O M PAG E Written in COBOL, a programming language that dates to 1959, SAVERR was built to run on old machines with black-and-green screens and noisy keyboards. Intended for use during face-to-face consultations with aid recipients in government offices, SAVERR requires employees to enter data a few fields at a time before moving on to the next screen. Data is batched overnight and printed periodically for hard-copy records. When people change their address, or enroll in or drop out of any program, the old entry is overwritten, and no historical record is left in the program. To access historical data, employees must search through electronic and paper archives. The Austin American-Statesman reported the monthly cost of running SAVERR on HHSC computers at $1 million. In 1999, the agency was ready with a blueprint for a new system. Where SAVERR processed records for each benefit program individually, the new system, TIERS, was designed to handle Medicaid, food stamps and Temporary Assistance for Needy Families benefits in an integrated database. By 2003, TIERS was ready to roll out in two Texas counties: Travis and Hays. At the same time, however, policy changes were brewing that would significantly complicate deployment of the new system. First, the Texas Legislature reorganized the state Department of Human Services — which was responsible for developing TIERS — under a much larger umbrella agency that became the HHSC, which accounts for one-third of the state’s annual operating budget. Then, the Legislature directed the HHSC to explore using private call centers, rather than walk-in government offices, for processing requests for social services benefits. A Benefits Behemoth Despite the problems, officials continued to add functions to the program. When the HHSC was reorganized to include a handful of other state services, management decided to let TIERS power as much of the agency’s work as possible, according to Flood’s report, which was released in April. TIERS grew into a benefits-calculating behemoth. “The project was so large and techdriven that some of the business needs were not properly designed into the system,” Flood said. Goodman contends the HHSC has handled deployment of the sprawling program just fine, but agrees it’s a big job. “It’s like remodeling a house with 4 million people, and they’re still living in it,” she said. When Accenture won the call center contract in 2005, the HHSC handed the company the job of running TIERS as well. The program still needed work, but to speed things along, the HHSC cut its contract with Deloitte and handed Accenture the job of fixing TIERS, along with starting up the call centers. Accenture eventually contracted some of the work of fixing and modifying TIERS back to Deloitte, at a hefty cost to the HHSC, according to Flood’s report. The HHSC built the call centers into its plans with the federal government so it wouldn’t have to start a separate approval process for the call centers, according to the report. “We spent a lot of money on the application, so we just didn’t want to throw it away,” said Gary Gumbert, the HHSC’s CIO. “Why go out and have to go through certification again? It’s a waste of money.” Signs of Trouble As the call center plan moved forward, the HHSC needed a data management system to support its new phone-based eligibility operations. The situation put HHSC officials on the horns of a dilemma: They could revert to SAVERR, a 30-year-old program that was never designed to work in a call center environment. They could adapt TIERS, which already had cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars, but also wasn’t designed for callcenter operations. Or they could use proprietary software provided by the company chosen to operate the newly privatized call centers. SAVERR worked, but the agency had already been directed to find a replacement, and the technology was quickly becoming outdated and unsupportable. HHSC managers decided against letting the call-center vendor SEPT_07 use its own eligibility software because they didn’t want to be locked into a proprietary solution, according to a report from HHSC Inspector General Brian Flood. TIERS — developed for the state by Deloitte Consulting — remained a work in progress, but the HHSC already had invested a substantial amount of money and time in the new program. Therefore, the HHSC decided to stick with TIERS and try to get it running smoothly in time for the call center rollout. TIERS needed to be tweaked to fit this new task, however. For example, the data entry fields were shrunk to fewer pages because the condensed format makes more sense for taking information over the phone. Even before being adapted for call center use, TIERS was very complicated. During pilot deployments, TIERS encountered problems that led to longer case-entry times and an inability to create certain case history reports needed for federal compliance. The report by Flood and a separate federal audit found that the program had serious design flaws as an eligibility-processing tool. Based on what HHSC officials were learning from the TIERS pilot, the agency already had a full plate, and the move to call centers complicated the program further. Still, when the HHSC submitted its call-center plan to the federal Food and Nutrition Service — which provides the state money for food stamps — the commission said it would push ahead with TIERS. Deadline Pressure The first call centers were scheduled to open in late January 2006 — a pace that became a problem when TIERS wouldn’t cooperate with another program slated to power the call centers, according to Flood’s report. Instead of pushing back the schedule to allow more time for getting the programs working together, managers stuck with the original timetable and had call-center workers enter enrollment data into TIERS and SAVERR concurrently. By that time, however, hundreds of HHSC employees who were proficient in SAVERR had taken new jobs because their offices were being replaced by call centers staffed by the contractor’s personnel. The low cost of operating and staffing phone bays rather than lots of small local offices was one of the call center plan’s most attractive parts. The Texas Legislature hoped to save hundreds of millions of dollars from the switch. 36 C O N T I N U E D O N PAG E 32 http://www.govtech.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Government Technology - September 2007

Contents Point of View Big Picture ESRI Insert The Last Mile GT Spectrum Profile Nuclear Revival Way Back Machine Intel Insert Tale of TIERS Joining Forces Saving Seniors Site Seeing Quarter Miles Two Cents Products Signal: Noise Digital Communities Contents Our Road Ahead Course of Action Shared Interests Special Report: Foundation for the Future Using Wireless to Save Lives Smart Grids for Energy Conservation Community Governing and Wizards

Government Technology - September 2007

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