1. Retiree Eligibility Benefit Intake System Upgrade and Enhancement
Project Closeout
Presented by: Tomas Rodriguez, IT Director
September 26, 2018

2. Agenda Project Abstract Business Need Objectives Solution
Close Out Summary
Status
Lessons Learned

3. Project Abstract Purpose
The computer system that is used by the NMRHCA that helps support this mission is a system that was largely developed “in-house” by the former IT staff of the agency and is known by the acronym “REBIS”, the Retiree Employee Benefit Intake System. REBIS consists of a Microsoft ACCESS data entry screen and a Microsoft SQL Server database and was developed in the early 90’s and upgraded in The purpose of the project was to address the following issues:
Data integrity. The original design of the REBIS system was not designed with data integrity in mind. Integrity checks have been added to back end process to ensure data is accurate but proper security controls and the separation of duties are needed.
Contributions tracking. Employer contributions are required to ensure the solvency of the agency and that retirees receive the benefit they paid for. The Accounts Receivable functions are nonexistent in REBIS, relying on a third party system that was not designed to track employee contributions.
Documented Business Requirements for which the current REBIS system would have been developed from are non-existent. The current REBIS system is a system developed in-house and the developers are no longer with the agency, in 2006 a contractor that assisted in the maintenance of the REBIS system was hired by the agency in order to support the system.
TECHNICAL APPROACH:
A business case was created in 2012 and was the foundation for the project. The technical approach to the project started with the problem statement and project description that included the objectives, project activities, tasks associated with the project startup, tasks associated with the project implementation, specific achievable and measurable statements of what would be accomplished, performance metrics and the lifecycle approach was an Agile approach.
WORK COMPLETED VS PROJECT OBJECTIVES:
The work completed does address the objectives of the project with varying results.

4. Objectives Number Description Number Description Business Objective 1
BUSINESS OBJECTIVE 2
Business objective 3
Business objective 4
Accurate Retiree Information – The system must provide accurate retiree information that is submitted to its health care carriers by the NMRHCA. Accuracy will be measured by the number of retiree corrections reported by the health care partners to the NMRHCA.
Correct Retiree Pension Deductions – The system must correctly withdraw pension deductions from retiree pensions that pay for retiree health care benefits. Accurate pension deductions will be measured by the number of incorrect monthly pension deductions reported.
Executive Dashboard – The system will provide an Executive Dashboard to the executive staff that will accurately provide up to date information on retiree information such as the number of retirees per health plan as well as financial information such as accurately tracking employee payments. The objective will be measured by the accuracy of the data in the reports that are identified in the planning phase.
HIPAA Compliance - HIPAA applies to all “covered entities,” which the law defines as health plan administrators, health information clearinghouses, and healthcare providers that transmit information electronically. The design of the REBIS system must address the HIPAA regulations and the NMRHCA must be able to show that HIPAAA has been addressed through design documents and policy that help to prevent, detect security events and allow for the correction of HIPAA Security violations.
Number
Description
TECHNICAL OBJECTIVE 1
TECHNICAL OBJECTIVE 2
TECHNICAL OBJECTIVE 3
TECHNICAL OBJECTIVE 4
IEEE Standards - To design a Retiree Benefit Intake System that is based on IEEE engineering standards for software engineering that will be measured through the code review process.
Business Requirements - To design a system that meets the business requirements of all divisions of the agency measured through the approved business cases.
Reliable and Efficient System - To design an efficient and reliable computer environment that supports the Retiree Benefit Intake System measured through the amount of system latency and system downtime.
HIPAA Compliance – The system will be responsible for the transmission of personal information, thus files will be encrypt and comply with HIPAA rulings. Any new hardware, hardware firmware, software, operating systems and the application

5. Solution
The solution was to build a Web Based system with the following attributes.
Modules
Retiree Intake
Retiree Enrollment
Retiree Maintenance
Retiree Reports
Finance
Employer Payment
Employer Maintenance
Retiree Collections
Financial Reports
Administration
Users
Roles
Permissions
Executive Dashboard
Executive Reports
Statistical Data
Data Integrity/Security
Data Integrity
Integrity checks built in every module.
Work Flow
Separation of duties through work flows.
Role Based
Permission to retiree data based on a users role.
Technology
Microsoft Team Foundation Server
Code management
Visual Studio 2013
Code development
Microsoft Server 2012
Hyper-V environment
Microsoft SharePoint 2012
Microsoft BizTalk 2013

6. Close Out Summary Cognosante: (06/30/2016)
The REBIS Project is in close-out phase although some functionality was deferred until after the formal project close 06/30/16. UAT was completed and client sign-offs obtained 06/27/16. The Final Production Cut-over schedule remains under discussion. REBIS Back-End functionality was still under review at Project Close along with some Back-End processes training on that functionality. Cognosante would like to extend congratulations to all who contributed to this complex software development project. Much was accomplished in June and based upon the UAT sign-off Cognosante finds the Project to have improved and with a few remaining risk areas the overall status moves into a “yellow” status.

7. Lessons Learned
Scope based on funding - The original business case created in 2011 had a 3,000, dollar funding request and I believe it was realistic. The 1,926, that we were allowed to spend was workable but did cause issues. With this knowledge we could have done a better job of reducing scope by re-analyzing the system requirements and re-thinking how the system could work as compared to how the old system works would have yielded better results.   Understanding Subject Matter Experts Expertise - Because we are a small agency the level of Subject Matter Experts are limited to a single person in many instances. The only SME in this area had a hard time conveying requirements as well as making time to convey those requirements. The contractors Project Manager did not have a workable understanding of financial systems that also caused issues and It wasn’t until another Project Manager took over that it was understood that much of the code that was already created would have to be redone. As a team we should have recognized the issue earlier in the projects development and located additional outside expertise in help in creating the requirements.