California Public Employees' Retirement System Honored for Outstanding Technology

California Chief Information Officer Clark Kelso announced Monday that the California Public Employees' Retirement System, known as CalPERS, has received two prestigious awards for excellence in using information technology to improve government services.

The National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) named the CalPERS Automated Communication Exchange System (ACES) winner of the "Digital Government - Government to Government" category and the CalPERS Member Self Service (MSS) Suite as the first runner up in the "Digital Government -- Government to Citizen" category, recognizing the two information technology systems for innovation and excellence in providing better government services at lower cost.

Both systems, ACES and the MSS Suite, replace traditional paper-based customer transactions at CalPERS with electronic Internet-based transactions. Employer and member transactions that used to take weeks and sometimes months are now processed instantly or within a few days, greatly increasing customer satisfaction while significantly reducing administrative costs.

State CIO Clark Kelso applauds CalPERS and CIO Jack Corrie's team. "Their success in recognizing the potential for IT to simultaneously reduce costs and enhance service serves as a paradigm for State government. The outstanding planning, development and implementation of these systems was based on a persuasive business case, without which, these projects would have been wasteful. For any IT project to go forward, a strongly supportive business case is paramount. All State IT projects should follow this model, and that's the direction we're taking the State."

ACES is an Internet-based system that provides a secure government-to-government environment in which contracting government employers can exchange retirement, health insurance, and payroll information with CalPERS on a transactional basis. The system allows more than 2,500 of these employers to self-manage their CalPERS accounts via the Internet. This means they can perform online transactions such as updating employee retirement and health benefit information and transmit employer retirement, health, and payroll data directly to CalPERS for processing. ACES has allowed CalPERS to dramatically increase the processing of health transactions from 50,000 to 350,000 without any additional staffing.

The MSS Suite is designed to better meet the needs of CalPERS 1.4 million members, enabling active and retired California public employees to conduct transactions and access vital information on the Internet. The system allows members to electronically obtain forms and publications, update personal information, calculate estimated retirement benefits, register for financial planning workshops, and view personal account information online.

"Over the past three years, CalPERS has pursued an aggressive Internet self-service strategy in order to improve customer service while reducing costs, transaction time, and staff workload," said CalPERS Chief Information Officer Jack Corrie. "We have eliminated customer service backlogs, shortened our transaction processing time tremendously, and saved millions of dollars in annual maintenance and administrative costs."

"The CalPERS program is a good example of leadership in government, recognizing how the effective application of information technology can achieve streamlined efficiency and improve service to citizens," said NASCIO President Gerry Wethington.

CalPERS, with more than $150 billion is assets, is the largest public pension fund in the U.S., with more than 2,500 participating employers including the State of California. The system manages retirement and health benefits for more than 1.4 million active and retired California public employees and their family members.