Citizens Information Systems Advisory Committee Meeting Report: March 14

 

The Citizens Property Insurance Corporation (“Citizens”) Information Systems Advisory Committee (“Committee”) met via teleconference yesterday, March 14, 2011 to hear updates on key projects and vendor management.

To view the meeting materials, click here.

Kelly Booten, Citizens vice president of enterprise planning and portfolio management, opened the meeting by speaking briefly about the Core Systems Strategy, which Citizens’ Board of Governors (“Board”) will review in July.

Robert Sellers, Citizens vice president of strategy and architecture, addressed Citizens’ corporate data center facility re-alignment, which includes the relocation and migration of the existing data center to a hosted data center operation.

“At this point we are looking somewhere between 18 to 24 months for the transition.  This will not be a big bang transition,”   Mr. Sellers said.  The timeline for exiting the existing facility is late 2015 or early 2016, he added.

Mr. Sellers said a search is in progress to find a migration project manager.  A job solicitation was issued earlier this year, but only two job candidates responded.  The position’s requirements have since been adjusted and a new solicitation will be issued within the next two weeks, he said.

A solicitation for a vendor and facility to host Citizens’ Internet infrastructure services also is expected to be presented to the Board for approval in July, Mr. Sellers said.

It was then explained how Citizens’ Information Technology (“IT”) Department has been asked to support the new inspections and underwriting process.  He said a new system will support the credentialing process, as well as some quality checks.

Subsequently, inspections will be assigned to inspection management companies by March 30.  The second phase of the project also includes inspection status updates, data migration and additional data warehouse and reporting functionality. 

Citizens’ new management system, which requires the support of more than two dozen people, will be used to track the status of all inspections.

Currently, Citizens’ policyholders are receiving approximately $847 million in wind mitigation premium credits.  Of that amount, an estimated $200 million are thought to be based on incorrect information, which will require those properties to be re-inspected.

“If the credits don’t apply, an endorsement will be done on the policy to remove the credits when the policy renews,” a Citizens official said.  The new management system will manage all the endorsements or policy changes that result from inspections.

Re-inspections of personal lines policies will start March 30, and commercial lines inspections will start in June, advised Yong Gilroy, Citizens senior vice president of claims, who also said that this process is expected to ultimately result in a $79 million net savings over the course of two years.

Mr. Sellers provided a brief update on Citizens’ System Integration Tool, explaining that Citizens’ IT Department supports 121 business systems and integrates with more than eight external business partners.  The goal is to use a competitive solicitation process to find a corresponding tool suite that would implement Citizens’ new Core strategy. 

“We do believe we will go after this in very phased-in approach,” Mr. Sellers said.  “It will be a situation where we will identify the highest value for that implementation.”

One vendor, EMS/Oracle, has been shortlisted.  The Board will make a final selection in July.

Mr. Sellers went on to discuss disaster recovery.  He said Citizens has a full-time disaster recovery planner who works closely with all information technology groups and business continuity planners.  Citizens plans one major disaster recovery test a year and three other, more limited-scope exercises as well.  The results of a January 2011 exercise that involved more than 50 staff members were very favorable, Mr. Sellers said. 

Curt Overpeck, Citizens’ chief information officer, spoke briefly about the range of audits that are conducted in the IT Department, which has established 11 major standards after examining the system and establishing priorities.  He also presented a history of IT reviews and audits conducted from 2007 through 2010.

The Committee took no action on an agenda item to review and approve the existing Committee charter, because a quorum had been lost by the time the item came up for discussion.  The charter is unchanged from a year ago, but an existing provision calls for an annual review and approval.

In his vendor management report, Rich Stewart, Citizens director of information technology project management office and business administration, explained how an IT vendor management program was created in 2010, so Citizens could manage its technology vendors more efficiently through better cost control, risk mitigation and other issues.  An IT vendor manager was hired in September 2010, he said.

“Identifying 15 strategic vendors is one of the first things we did,” Mr. Stewart said.  “The other thing vendor management has done is to resolve issues we have with chief vendors.  We have had a lot of success with that.”

As part of a monthly vendor evaluation system, Citizens completes a “scorecard” based on product and/or service delivery, financials and relationships.  In turn, the vendors rate Citizens’ performance, Mr. Stewart said.

With no further business before the Committee, the meeting was adjourned.

 

Should you have any questions or comments, please contact Colodny Fass.

 

 

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