The Texas Integrated Eligibility Redesign System (TIERS) is a web-based system that integrates the application process for more than 50 health and human services programs. Essentially, it’s software. TIERS will replace several outdated systems, including the 30-year-old System of Application, Verification, Eligibility, Referral and Reporting system (SAVERR), with a single integrated system.  SAVERR, which was designed in the ’60s and launched in the ’70s, is written in a computer language that colleges no longer teach and is difficult to service.

The state began a TIERS pilot in June 2003 in eligibility offices in Travis and Hays counties. In November 2006, all Williamson County cases were converted to TIERS. Currently, there are more than 430,000 active cases for food stamps, Medicaid, TANF and related services in TIERS. That’s 11.6 percent of HHSC’s statewide caseload.

The State Auditor’s Office performed testing and concluded that TIERS correctly determines if someone qualifies for food stamps, Medicaid and TANF and that the system calculates benefits accurately. Auditors did not find any instances in which TIERS calculated benefit amounts incorrectly.

That change has already been made. HHSC identified the same concern during a 2004 architectural review of TIERS. In 2003, the Legislature moved TIERS from the former Department of Human Services to HHSC. The project’s new managers brought in a team of experts to review the design of TIERS. The review team concluded that the original database design was inefficient, and HHSC made improvements to TIERS in early 2005 to improve efficiency and increase the integrity of the information in the database.

TIERS is a scalable system. HHSC can add capacity as it is needed by purchasing additional servers and related hardware. HHSC will conduct a thorough assessment of hardware needs before any rollout. The agency currently estimates that it will cost about $2.5 million to increase TIERS capacity to handle a statewide rollout, and these expenses are accounted for in the TIERS budget.

Basically, HHSC increased storage requirements to increase accountability and performance. The TIERS process is by design a more rigorous and complete look at a household. Because it is designed to support an integrated approach to eligibility, TIERS collects twice as many data elements as SAVERR. This results in stricter adherence to state and federal policy requirements.

In addition, the system has a variety of users with different needs, including investigators who need to pull accurate and detailed historical information about how a client’s case looked on different dates. After evaluating a number of options, HHSC decided that it was more effective to store information in TIERS in a way that allowed historical information to be retrieved quickly and easily. This approach requires more storage but allows the system to pull reports and information quickly, thus saving employees’ time and increasing productivity.

By comparison, the legacy SAVERR system requires HHSC to maintain 498 file servers and 1,458 communication and queue servers in local offices. This hardware, and its required maintenance, will no longer be required at the local level once TIERS operates statewide.

Yes. Before July, user acceptance testing was the vendor’s responsibility as part of the Texas Access Alliance contract, which included TIERS maintenance and development. HHSC staff reviewed the results of the testing performed by the vendor. In July 2007, HHSC staff began performing user acceptance testing as operational responsibility for that function moved from the vendor to the state. At that time, HHSC increased staffing for the User Acceptance Test Team from 8 to 25.

As the State Auditor noted, TIERS did experience high downtime in July 2007 when system maintenance transitioned from a contractor to the state. This was unusual. In September 2007, TIERS had only 19 minutes of unplanned down time. From January 2007 through September 2007, TIERS’ system availability was close to 99 percent.

Conversely, downtime for SAVERR has been a problem in some offices primarily due to issues with aging and out-of-date equipment. During the past year (from October 1, 2006, through September 30, 2007), local offices using SAVERR experienced 2,663 hours of down time – compared to 33 hours of downtime for TIERS during that same period.

No. There is a thorough process to validate and test any change made directly to client data in the TIERS database. These changes are rare, and the agency is working to reduce the need for such changes even further. The SAO noted that HHSC makes an average of 387 manual changes to the database each month. This represents a tiny fraction of the 4.5 million transactions processed each month.

HHSC is working to reduce the number of manual data corrections and manual processes. However, in some cases a manual process is appropriate and necessary. For example, if a caseworker mistakenly enters the wrong date from an application, a senior worker may enter the correction for that case. This allows the case to be completed during an applicant’s office visit.

No. A case that is “pending” has been looked at by a caseworker who is now waiting for more information to be submitted by the applicant. At any given time, a high number of cases being processed will be in the pending category.

No. There are more than 1,000 screens available in TIERS, but only those screens that are applicable to the case being processed are presented to the caseworker.  A worker goes through 80-100 screens for a typical case, and a complex case might require up to 250 screens.

The budget for TIERS development, maintenance and training is $575 million from 1999 through 2010. So far, HHSC has spent $372 million of that budget, including $250 million for the original development of the system. That puts the project on track to stay within its budget. TIERS does more and costs less than similar systems in other large states. For example, California introduced four separate systems with price tags exceeding $400 million each, and New York’s system cost nearly $330 million for the original development.

TIERS doesn’t support a static process so it will never be a static system. The system must be adjusted to add new programs, comply with new state and federal requirements, or support changes to the business model. This means that development and maintenance of TIERS are ongoing efforts. Whatever the reason for a change, HHSC has continually placed a high priority on ensuring that TIERS eligibility and benefit calculations are accurate.

HHSC will continue to address the issues identified in the SAO audit, seek technical assistance from the Department of Information Resources, and work with federal agencies to get the necessary federal approvals before converting additional areas to TIERS.