AWARDS & RECOGNITION

2003 Awards: Digital Government: Government to Government (G to G)

WINNER:
California
CalPERS

Left to right: Peter Lai, Jack Corrie, Teri Lynch

The California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS) is the largest public pension fund in the United States with a current investment portfolio of over $133.8 billion. It serves over one million active members, retirees, survivors and beneficiaries through its retirement benefit programs, and pays over $6.3 billion in retirement benefits annually. The membership of CalPERS' retirement program is comprised of approximately one-third State employees, one-third employees of the 2,519 local public agencies that contract with CalPERS for retirement benefits, and one-third classified school employees. CalPERS also administers a statewide health program.

In the course of managing millions of retirement and health accounts, CalPERS was deluged with paperwork—its contracting agencies (employers) generated tens of thousands of pages of paper for submittal to CalPERS. Until 1999, it was common for state and public agencies to experience a four to six week delay between the time they submitted member changes and the time those changes took effect. Today, the picture is much different as a result of the Automated Communication and Exchange System (ACES).

"Over the last three years, CalPERS has pushed an aggressive Internet "self-service" strategy in order to reduce costs, transaction cycles and the workload on our back office. We've migrated away from "best of breed products" to "technology stacks running suites of applications" and the results have been significant. We've eliminated backlogs, shortened our processing cycles, and shaved millions off our annual maintenance, licensing and integration costs! For us, ACES is proof that we're headed down the right path! We will continue to expand our B2B and B2C services in order to better serve our members and employers!" Jack Corrie, Chief Information Officer, CalPERS

ACES is a portal-based system that provides a highly secure environment in which employers can exchange retirement, health, and payroll information with CalPERS on a transactional basis. It is designed to provide self-service capabilities, with no associated fees. ACES benefits California's State and public employers (and hence their employees) by:

• Leveraging the Internet to eliminate incompatibilities between disparate systems.
• Eliminating paper. State and public employers across California can now do business with CalPERS electronically. Less manual processing of information results in fewer errors.
• Speeding up the process. Prior to ACES, the multi-step process to provide a health card to a new enrollee took ten to twelve weeks. Now, with ACES, health cards are delivered within 5 days!
• Reducing costs. Today, over 90% of the health enrollment workload is accomplished via ACES. As a result, processing costs are lower due to the reduced workload and reduced postage charges.
• Doing more with less. With ACES, CalPERS increased the number of health transactions processed from 50,000 to 350,000 without increasing staff.

  OTHER NOMINATIONS:
  Click on the link to download program submission.
  
  Arkansas
  Justice Xchange
  
  Florida
  Enterprise Technology Service Desk
  
  Idaho
  Electronic W2 Download for State of Idaho Employees
  
  Indiana
  e-TRAIN: A Training Solution for Government Employees
  
  Kentucky
  The Kentucky E-Payment Gateway: Enterprise Service for Payment Processing
  
  Michigan
  Using a Data Warehouse to Improve Foster Care for Michigan Children and Their Families
  
  Missouri
  e-Grants
  
  New Jersey
  NJ Mapp -- New Jersey Mapping Assistance Partnership Program
  
  North Carolina
  Government to Government - Easy Government Access through Identity and Access Management
  
  Tennesse
  Local Government Investment Pool Internet Banking Project
  
  Texas
  Child Support Portal - Data Transfer System
  
  Virginia
  Online Grievance Data Collection System
  
  Utah
  Utah Online Impound Vehicle System
  
  Washington
  Inside Washington
  
  West Virginia
  West Virginia Employee Communications Network
  
  Wisconsin
  Wisconsin Department of Justice - AISLE
  
  

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