According to a recent article in INPUT, TIERS has so far cost the tax payers 800 million dollars. Mind you, this was necessary because the old system was costing the state 1.5 million dollars a year. At this rate, even if TIERS doesn't cost the state another penny... which of course it will, since TIERS still does not work as well as the old system by a long shot, the state will break even in the year 2540 A.D.
It is possible that INPUT has the figure wrong, because in 2005, the price tag admitted to by HHSC was approximately 300 million... and so if we stick with the lower figure, we will only have to wait until the year 2156 A.D. to break even, barring any further expenses needed to fix TIERS.
This, of course, does not take into account the intangible human costs of people doing without because a system doesn't deliver the services that they are supposed to be getting.
"Recent controversies surrounding "big bang" projects like the $800 million Texas Integrated Eligibility Redesign System (TIERS) will drive states toward more iterative approaches to integrated eligibility. "Everyone looked past the low-key, successful implementations in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts a few years ago and got excited about the potentially huge short-term returns of a project like TIERS," added Dixon. "The next wave of projects will follow the more patient example of states like Utah, New York, and North Carolina, which are taking phased approaches that minimize the risk of service disruptions upon rollout of the new interface."" INPUT, August 23, 2006
One has to wonder when someone is going to be held accountable for such a huge amount of waste.
