CA Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) Case Studies

CalPERS, the largest public retirement system and pension fund in the USA, provides retirement and health benefits and security to more than 1.6 million members and 3,000 employers across California state, school, and public agency members. To better serve its members, reduce costs, and improve operational efficiency, CalPERS partnered with Delegata and developed an Internet-based application for partner communications.

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Automated Communications Exchange System (ACES)

The Challenge

CalPERS provides more than 1,800 unique benefits affecting its employers, providers, and members. They wanted to enhance the processes that supported their business, making them more scalable to support a larger number of employer partners without significantly increasing staff or costs. CalPERS recognized that their existing processes could be tightly integrated—reducing errors and time consumption. In short, they needed a robust, cost-effective tool to support a significant increase in health insurance benefits and speed-up information flow.

The Automated Communication Exchange System (ACES) portal was developed to provide the people, process, and technology links for CalPERS’ new G2G/G2B platform. Featuring online data entry forms, file transfers, inquiry, and billing capabilities for critical operations, ACES effectively meets the needs of CalPERS and its employer partners.

The Solution

Delegata built ACES to seamlessly connect with CalPERS’ existing legacy systems while utilizing Oracle’s new 9iAS Model View Controller (MVC) framework. We developed an e-service strategic vision, defined roles and responsibilities, modified existing processes, and defined new processes while establishing a new technology infrastructure. Not only did Delegata provide project management, analysis, development, and quality assurance assistance, we also ensured that CalPERS’ staff members fully understood how to implement and maintain the solution via a thorough knowledge transfer process.

Using this solution framework, Delegata developed dashboards for two of the most critical strategic projects at CalPERS: the Pension System Resumption (PSR) and Workload Capacity Management (WCM) projects. These dashboards proved to be powerful project management tools, enabling managers to quickly assess a project’s status, including its usage of resources. To optimize resource planning, key factors considered were: available resources, turnover rates, resource replacement times, training effectiveness, and project forecasting. At the same time, the dashboards gave the managers other invaluable information about the projects, such as their adherence to schedule, quality, and budget targets, the general level of risk, and the overall performance of the project.

The Benefits

CalPERS employers and provider partners now use the Internet to quickly and easily process health, membership, and payroll transactions. Employing Delegata’s pragmatic approach, CalPERS achieved substantial benefits, including:

– Dramatic reduction in manual processing

– 97% satisfaction rate increase

– Ability to grow with their partners

– Less wasted time correcting data errors

– Streamlined new account processing

– Improved tracking and monitoring

– Electronically processed payroll data

– Increased security

Dashboard Component (DC)

The Challenge

CalPERS, the largest public retirement system in the nation, provides retirement and health benefits to more than 1.4 million members and 2,500 employers. In a large organization such as this, multiple projects and programs often compete for the same limited resources. It can be quite difficult for program and project managers to utilize these limited resources most effectively. To perform capacity planning, a manager must quickly understand where resources are used and when they might become available for other projects. However, managers typically don’t have the time to explore each project in detail to analyze current resource utilization, or to explore each upcoming project to analyze resource demand. Poor resource planning can lead to key resources being overused, or available resources being underutilized. Rather than continue their ad hoc approach to resources, CalPERS sought a reliable way to manage utilization more effectively.

The Solution

Understanding the critical importance of capacity planning and resource usage in meeting their corporate goals, CalPERS partnered with Delegata to build an effective mechanism for understanding and managing capacity utilization. Delegata’s Optimize Capacity Utilization solution, created to address the types of resource challenges facing CalPERS, enables an understanding of both the organization’s existing resource capacity and the ongoing demands for those resources.

The Benefits

As a result of Delegata’s solution, CalPERS was able to gain a solid understanding of its resource capacity and demand, including: what resources it had available, what its capacity commitments were, and how best to allocate resources across projects. Senior management now had information that allowed them to make effective decisions about how to best use their resources to maximize their organization’s return on investment. Project and program managers were able to effectively utilize resources in critical projects such as PSR and WCM. Furthermore, with this solution now in place, CalPERS has the tools and techniques it needs to effectively manage resources in the future.

Network Strategy

The Challenge

The ITSB group at CalPERS provides voice and data telecommunications services to a diverse group of users with unique service requirements. With construction of its new ‘R Street’ facilities underway, CalPERS wanted a solid plan for meeting anticipated telecommunication needs. Delegata assessed the overall enterprise network for possible integration, which contradicted the existing strategy of separate voice and data networks. CalPERS quickly understood the options, costs, and benefits associated with Delegata’s proposed strategy.

The Solution

CalPERS partnered with Delegata to undertake the analysis of the voice and data networks. The team conducted a comparative analysis, investigated network growth, submitted recommendations, facilitated approval, and provided a high-level conceptual design for a pilot VoIP-based network. Employing Delegata’s Diamond© methodology, we developed a strategic vision that defined the roles and responsibilities essential to meeting the proposed vision. This solution-based approach ensured that CalPERS was able to preserve prior investments while implementing a high-end, integrated network.

The Benefits

Based on our analysis, a Voice over IP (VoIP) solution was identified as the most appropriate direction for the CalPERS’ ‘R Street’ project. Delegata evaluated the technical and conceptual alternatives associated with the pre-existing voice/data strategy and convergence and made appropriate recommendations. The analysis resulted in the definition of a clear growth strategy and implementation plan that enabled CalPERS to meet its strategic and business goals.

Pension System Resumption (PSR)

The Challenge

CalPERS, the largest public retirement system in the world, provides retirement and health benefits to more than 1.4 million members and 2,500 employers. The Pension System Resumption (PSR) solution sets the foundation for CalPERS’ vision to use the internet as a primary channel for conducting its business – a solution known as “my|CalPERS.” The foundation for the vision is a technology infrastructure that provides the flexibility, expandability, and scalability required to grow the business in the coming decades. By 2011, PSR will enhance today’s my|CalPERS by providing a fully integrated suite of products and services that will enrich the web experience for internal staff, participants, employers, and the business partner community. With the implementation of these self-service capabilities, CalPERS will be able to minimize today’s administrative support services and focus instead on adding increased analytical and planning value to its extensive member community.

As a longtime Delegata client, CalPERS recognized Delegata’s commitment to excellence in the delivery of effective business solutions, and requested Delegata’s assistance in managing the PSR Project.

The Solution

Using a solution-driven approach and its expertise in project management, Delegata established a robust set of project management services within CalPERS that aligned with industry best practices leveraging the baseline available in our “Use a Project Office for Large Project Success” solution. Some components of Delegata’s solution include:

- Guidance and expertise in project management and governance, including knowledge transfer, tools, and techniques to CalPERS staff at all levels of the organization.

Execution of key roles, such as Project Office management, Risk and Issue management, Communications, Configuration/Change Management, Quality Assurance/Control, Resources and Schedule management, and Contract/regulatory compliance.
Information, forecasting, and trend analyses enabling CalPERS to proactively manage and control the PSR Project.
Standardization of project management practices, processes, and tools to ensure that Project performance is consistently measured against strategic and tactical goals.

In addition to providing project management services, Delegata supports other critical aspects of the Project, such as security, design consulting, and the testing of over 100 interfaces for over 3,000 external partners.

The Benefits

BUSINESS BENEFITS

CalPERS and Delegata are partnering in the project management of the new PSR solution, with CalPERS leading the way with its expertise in retirement and health services, and Delegata bringing best practices in project management solutions to the Project. The initial launch of the solution will bring the web experience to internal staff, participants, employers, and the business partner community. Improved member self-service features will follow shortly thereafter. Using the internet as the primary channel for conducting business, CalPERS will modernize its pension retirement services and provide ongoing flexibility to scale and adapt its products and operations to ever-changing market needs. The successful partnership of CalPERS and Delegata will bring retirement system self-service to millions of public employees.

Pension System Resumption Java Quality Tool (PSRQT)

The Challenge

The PSR Project replaces 49 legacy systems with a custom developed application nested in enterprise architecture packages and services that sets the foundation for CalPERS’ vision of the Internet as a primary channel for conducting its business. The project’s foundation is a technology infrastructure that provides the flexibility, expandability, and scalability required to grow the business in the coming decades. The PSR Project lays the foundation by; replacing the legacy Contribution Reporting and Benefit Payment Systems, converting the Judicial and Legislative Retirement Systems to the new technology base, and completing the corporate database.

CalPERS and its prime contractor, Accenture, recognized a need to monitor programming quality in the rapidly growing baseline of Java software. The Java source code spanned some 11,000 separate files developed by many programmers. Monitoring quality by direct inspection was laborious and impractical. CalPERS and Accenture needed tools to both assist programmers in identifying compliance issues, and to help provide project leaders with statistics and measures of Java quality across the entire PSR Project.

The Solution

CalPERS and Accenture partnered with Delegata for our knowledge of Java technologies, complex analysis, and project management best practices. Our solution, Managing System Configuration Integrity, is designed to control the cost of quality through reviews and feedback, and through the implementation of proven quality practices. Delegata architected the PSR Java Quality Tool as a set of nearly two dozen components that measure compliance of the PSR Java code with CalPERS PSR Project Coding Standards.

The PSR Java Quality Tool is a quality control tool with high-value potential for software developers, contractors to State agencies, and State agency project offices. Operating inside a software development environment, it can provide software developers real time feedback on coding standards violations. The tool can also be deployed to monitor coding standards compliance across very large code bases, thereby supporting the generation of statistics and any trends in product quality.

The Benefits

BUSINESS BENEFITS

The quality of a complex software code base was continuously measured against defined standards, facilitating improvement and status reporting. The previous practice of directly inspecting a small portion of the massive PSR code base to infer the quality of the code base was eliminated. Monitoring the PSR code has become a routine Quality Control function of the PSR Project Office, providing CalPERS a clear picture of the quality of their evolving PSR system.

TECHNICAL BENEFITS

The PSR Java Quality Tool provides methods of monitoring compliance of Java code to agency-specific coding standards. It can be deployed across a large software development enterprise, providing software developers direct feedback inside their development environment. The solution can be used independently or in conjunction with other quality tools to monitor the health of large-scale application development endeavors. The PSR Java Quality Tool improves the ability to monitor quality while dramatically reducing the effort involved.

Project Office Knowledge Management (POKM)

The Challenge

When CalPERS elected to resume achievement of their strategy to replace aging systems, they embarked on a $350M initiative to upgrade their pension benefits applications and architecture. Due to the size of the initiative, they knew their internal PMO materials would not be able to match the needs for control in such a large project environment. They also planned to ensure everything built for the Pension System Resumption (PSR) Project was maintained and reusable for future large initiatives. The initial consulting team that was engaged to build this baseline proved incapable of meeting the expectations of CalPERS, so they were removed and Delegata was approached with this challenge.

The Solution

Delegata freely offers access to Diamond©, Delegata’s internal knowledge system to clients. Delegata provided access to CalPERS individuals in a version of Diamond for their use. Diamond incorporated many industry methodologies and templates as well as tools and samples required or useful during execution of each methodology. The PSR Project was able to build its project standards based on this initial, rich baseline of knowledge. Within the PSR Project, the knowledge then had to be shared with others for use and retention within CalPERS in a lasting and effective way. The recommended solution was a Project Portal that allowed formal and informal documentation to be maintained and shared across various defined stakeholder elements for private or public consumption. The Portal was structured to allow general information as well as team-specific information and documentation to be maintained for the life of the project.

The Benefits

BUSINESS BENEFITS

The knowledge baseline within the PSR Project Portal grew rapidly and became a rich repository for reference throughout the project. The speed of establishing the required templates, formats and content helped to allow focus on the more important work of executing plans and measuring performance. During execution, the measured performance also provided for the first-ever operational dashboard for project performance, helping management to focus on any difficulties with project execution. The Portal allowed users to seek the appropriate people for knowledge they needed, find content as knowledge, and interact with relevant data to better understand project performance from their own desired perspectives.

TECHNICAL BENEFITS

The Portal was based on an Open Source application called Plone. As a content management system, as well as a pre-built infrastructure for a documentation-based repository, Plone was the ideal choice; enabling the accumulation of a vast set of materials, while allowing users to highlight the most important and pertinent information and artifacts for various phases of execution. The result should be a lasting set of knowledge that can be immeasurably important for future initiatives, including this reusable technology infrastructure.

Public Employer Readiness Team (PERT)

The Challenge

CalPERS, the largest public retirement system in the nation, provides retirement and health benefits to more than 1.4 million members and 2,500 employers. In order to meet its vision of becoming a “virtual” pension system, CalPERS chartered a strategic project, titled Pension System Resumption (PSR). PSR will modernize CalPERS’ technology infrastructure and outdated systems. This will represent a major change to the way CalPERS works with its business partners.

The Public Employer Readiness Team (PERT) project was created to prepare business partners for working with the new technologies and processes in PSR. Any change of this magnitude presents certain challenges, such as ensuring the business partners understand new processes and procedures, have received any needed training, and have effective communication channels with CalPERS before, during, and after the transition. The PERT project is critical to the overall success of PSR; and therefore, to CalPERS meeting its vision.

Knowing Delegata’s expertise in communication and project management, CalPERS requested Delegata’s help in managing and executing this crucial project.

The Solution

Using our solution Manage Constituent Communications, Delegata and the CalPERS team developed a process for helping business partners ready themselves for the transition. Aspects of the solution included new business processes which facilitated communication; new formats for electronically exchanging information with CalPERS; and comprehensive training to prepare business partners for the transition.

Building and maintaining effective communication, education, and transition support were at the core of this solution. The team guided business partners through the transition process, ensuring that communication channels were open, questions were answered, and the business partners had the information needed to prepare for the transition. The team prepared readiness guides and delivered a series of educational sessions, webinars, and Town Hall meetings to further prepare the business partners.

The Benefits

BUSINESS BENEFITS

Whenever business processes or technologies change, the transition can be difficult for both an organization and its customers. Successful change efforts prepare the customers for the change, and ensure that communication is established timely, and effectively. The PERT project met these success goals by preparing CalPERS’ business partners for the changes that PSR will bring by strengthening communication between CalPERS and its business partners. As a result of this effort, the business partners will be ready when PSR is implemented.

Security

The Challenge

CalPERS, the largest public retirement system in the nation, provides retirement and health benefits to more than 1.4 million members and 2,500 employers. In order to meet its vision of becoming a “virtual” pension system, CalPERS chartered a strategic project, titled PSR. PSR is an enterprise-wide effort which will modernize many of CalPERS information systems, as well as its hardware and software infrastructure.

One of the most critical aspects of any large technology program such as PSR is security. It will be essential for CalPERS to ensure Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability of its data, business processes, systems, and infrastructure. One must protect against threats such as hacking, fraud, or natural disaster, while creating functional business continuity capabilities.

CalPERS requested Delegata’s help in developing a consolidated Application and Technical Security Plan to ensure business functionality, data asset protection/integrity, access control, auditing/monitoring and logging, performance management, system integration, and operations through enforcement of security policies, governance and regulatory mandates. Furthermore, the legal regulation compliance and related risk assessment dictates the need for an acceptance criteria and the mitigation strategy as well as State mandates, HIPAA and ADA as primary legal requirements.

The Solution

Using our solution Secure Enterprise Assets, Delegata built comprehensive security architecture for CalPERS. In the architecture, we considered the different aspects of security, such as intrusion detection, vulnerability scanning, data security, risk, and security policy governance. Components of our solution included:

A consolidated Application and Technical Security Plan
A strategy for establishing and managing the security architecture
Understanding the security requirements of the organization and the applications within it
Security architecture policies and procedures
Strategy for establishing and managing security governance
A risk and vulnerability assessment and resultant development of mitigation/remediation strategy
Plans for data protection, recovery, and archiving
Contingency planning for disaster recovery
Plans and procedures related to suspicious activity and fraud detection

The Benefits

TiddlyWiki allows massive regulatory and legal documents to be easily navigated in a non-linear way, much like a web-site with navigation toolbars, and content can be more readily located using keyword searches. Notes, comments, and additional content or documents can easily be added to the wiki to increase its usefulness. The JavaScript allows the wiki to be richly formatted, which can greatly add to the readability of the file. Adding to its user-friendliness is the fact that the wiki is highly portable and can be stored on a thumb-drive or even emailed.

TECHNICAL BENEFITS

The TiddlyWiki is an open-sourced solution so there are no licensing fees, and a wealth of free plug-ins are available online to extend functionality. It can easily be customized to conform to organizational style guidelines or updated to include new functionality. It runs with a web-browser and does not require any additional software.

Self Service

The Challenge

CalPERS was challenged with meeting the demands of more than 1.4 million members including improving service delivery, enabling Internet-based communications, and reducing the volume of paper forms and manual processes. These functions needed to be supplied in a timely manner while consolidating legacy systems onto a common platform. After investigating the challenges, Delegata and CalPERS partnered to implement a self-service solution for CalPERS members.

The Solution

People, processes, and technology must all be addressed when implementing a total solution. Employing Delegata’s Diamond© methodology, we developed a strategic vision and defined the roles and responsibilities essential to meeting it. By modifying existing responsibilities and business processes, we established the technology infrastructure that allows CalPERS members to have around-the-clock access to services.

MSS solution components were built to seamlessly connect with CalPERS’ existing legacy systems while utilizing Oracle’s new 9iAS Model View Controller (MVC) framework. In addition to application development, the Delegata team quickly brought CalPERS staff members up-to-speed by teaching them the analysis methods and project management skills necessary to ease the transition and minimize the need for future assistance.

The Benefits

CalPERS members can now easily change addresses, download forms, alter personal information, calculate retirement benefits, obtain annual statements, order publications, and register for seminars. Since implementation of the new self-service solution, CalPERS’ website transaction volume increased to one million hits per week and internal staff can now seamlessly build and maintain new applications. As with several of Delegata’s solution sets, MSS received prestigious technology awards from major government entities, including the Government Technology Conference (GTC) ‘Best Solution’ award.

TiddlyWiki (TW)

The Challenge

CalPERS is the largest public pension fund in the nation, providing retirement and health benefits to approximately 1.5 million public employees, retirees, and their families and more than 2,500 employers. In conducting its business, CalPERS must navigate massive legal and regulatory documentation, which is often available in a format that only allows for viewing information in a linear manner (beginning to end, top to bottom). When such files are hundreds or thousands of pages in length, locating specific sections of interest can be frustrating and time-consuming. Adding to the challenge of working with such documents is that notes, comments, or related information must be created or stored in separate documents.

The Solution

To aid CalPERS in more effectively leveraging the information in large regulatory documents and files, Delegata introduced TiddlyWiki, an Orchestrate Legislative Implementation – Authoritative Source Component that is pertinent to multiple solutions defined by Delegata.

A TiddlyWiki is a self-contained HTML file that is programmed in JavaScript. As the file is self-contained, there is no need to connect to a server or the Internet; it is highly portable and has all of the tools required to edit and maintain the information embedded in the file. It can be used as a web-based information manager, personal notebook, or collaborative tool. Since it is web-based, it allows for the non-linear viewing of information and is intuitive to navigate. The result is a robust, user friendly solution that dramatically reduces time consuming efforts and frustration for CalPERS staff.

The Benefits

BUSINESS BENEFITS

TECHNICAL BENEFITS

Workload Capacity Management

The Challenge

CalPERS is the largest public pension fund in the nation providing retirement and health benefits to approximately 1.5 million public employees, retirees, and their families and more than 2,500 employers. The Information Technology Services Branch (ITSB) is responsible for all IT functions and is currently undertaking a $300M Pension System Resumption (PSR) project, the new platform upon which CalPERS will base all of its pension operations. The ITSB Senior Management team (SMT) needed to manage/prioritize the work generated by PSR while concurrently managing day-to-day operations. Failure to do so would result in significant costs to CalPERS – an estimated $1M per week.

The Solution

CalPERS selected Delegata to deliver theWorkload and Capacity Management (WCM) project to ensure that the ITSB SMT has the workload and capacity information necessary to lead ITSB towards fulfilling its work commitments for the PSR project while simultaneously maintaining existing project schedules. The goal of the WCM is to significantly improve productivity by clearly organizing and communicating ITSB’s capability to support:

Retirement of all applications/technology being replaced by PSR
CalPERS on-going business
Incoming PSR and all other associated project work

The Benefits

Delegata developed, implemented and trained CalPERS ITSB SMT on the WCM solution which enables them to:

- Distinguish priorities in current and future work
- Identify resource capacity constraints
- Effectively manage and monitor workload and make appropriate priority decisions
- Accomplish necessary PSR planning work while maintaining high quality in existing projects

Delegata partnered with CalPERS and employed formal Organizational Change Management and Business Process Reengineering methods to ensure the new WCM solution was successfully adopted. The system is now used to effectively manage workload and avoid impacts that were previously unavoidable among hundreds of events per week.

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