Thursday, December 13, 2007

TSEU News Bulletin from 11/8/07

The Texas State Auditor's Office released its report on TIERS in October.  The investigation was ordered by the Texas Legislature during the last session.
 
SIGNIFICANT FINDINGS:
 
* TIERS can correctly determine eligibility and calculate benefits, but only when users have access to "other processes" that are NOT identified in the report.
 
* As of JUNE 2007, HHSC had spent at least $351.7 MILLION on TIERS, which is 61% of the TOTAL projected budget through 2010, and correcting the problems would cause many millions of dollars.
 
* Fundamental design flaws, described as "Poor architectural design and chronic problems," make TIERS slow, ineffecient, and overly complex.  Inefficient use of data storage and processing capacity will require massive system expansion.
 
* TIERS could not handle statewide rollout without correction of flaws and massive expansion.
 
Among the Details:
 
Eligibility staff could encounter more than 250 screens (of the total 1059 screens in the system) in working a SINGLE case.
 
TIERS was not designed as a relational database system, a basic design flaw that makes the system inefficient, increases requirements for data storage, and makes data integrity questionable.
 
FOR further information, please go to www.cwa-tseu.org.  I'd encourage any state employee out there to join the union. 


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