In the wake of a critical report on the system that was supposed to handle eligibility for all of the state's health and human service programs, legislative leaders want the State Auditor to speed up a planned look at that system.
That system — called TIERS (Texas Integrated Eligibility Redesign System) — is all fouled up. The inspector general for HHSC — Brian Flood — says so in a report circulating around the Capitol (and contested by Health and Human Services Commission itself).
House Speaker Tom Craddick and Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst want State Auditor John Keel to tell them what's wrong by the end of June. And the HHSC response to Flood's report asks for the same thing.
Flood's report says there should be one person in charge of TIERS, that an "expert consultant" should be hired to look at alternatives, that the program's expansion should be frozen for now, that the State Auditor should look at the program, that a quality assurance team — something spelled out in state law — should be dispatched, and that the agency should "stabilize the current workforce environment."
The response from HHSC starts with a cutting remark: "We recognize that the Office of Inspector General was given a challenging task to complete a review within about a month of an eight-year-old technology project and a procurement process that spanned more than a year." That five-page report goes on to say flatly that "the new system works." But they acknowledge they've got troubles.
They got bad grades on tests when the new system was handling Food Stamp benefits. TIERS is slower than the system it is supposed to replace, but they contend that's because it does more. And they say they're working with federal officials to fix problems before they expand use of the new system.
HHSC disputes the OIG claim that TIERS could produce billions of dollars in "questioned costs." OIG contested the decision to award an integrated eligibility contract to Accenture (that's in the process of being canceled), but HHSC said that was the cheaper bid and said the losing bidder challenged the decision in the courts and lost.
And with that back-and-forth, state leaders want the State Auditor to go have a close look.
The Dewhurst/Craddick letter follows, and you can get the HHSC response to the OIG report as an attachment at the bottom, or in our Files section. The OIG report isn't available (that we know of) in electronic form.
