Key Projects Recently Completed
Cybersettle
Under the New York City Charter, the New York City Office of the Comptroller is responsible for settling and adjusting claims filed for and against the City. During the last two fiscal years, the City paid out approximately $1 billion in settlements and judgments.
An average of 24,000 new claims are filed against the City of New York annually. Of these claims – approximately 17,000 a year – involve personal injury. In the past, it has taken about four years to resolve each claim, resulting in a backlog of over 70,000 claims in litigation, expensive settlements, and high processing costs. Approximately 80% of these outstanding claims involve less serious injuries and can be settled for under $25,000.
In an effort to reduce the litigation backlog and better control claim costs, the New York City Comptroller’s Office embarked on an innovative technology initiative called Cybersettle, which uses the internet to resolve claims filed against the City. Cybersettle was selected by Business Week Magazine as one of the top 50 Web applications in the nation, and was recently selected by Government Technology Magazine as the most innovative use of technology for New York City in 2007.
Cybersettle facilitates high-speed, confidential claim settlements by matching offers and demands and allows parties to settle disputes instantly via a secure internet connection. Cybersettle uses a patented online, double-blind bid process for matching each party’s settlement offers and demands. Cybersettle represents the first technological advance for supporting the settlement of claims since the invention of the telephone. While many commercial insurers use Cybersettle to settle insurance-related claims, the Comptroller’s use of Cybersettle technology is unique in two respects: (1) New York City is the first municipality in the nation to employ internet technology to settle tort claims and (2) the City’s existing claims management system (OAISIS) integrates seamlessly with the Cybersettle technology.
Cybersettle virtually eliminates the use of the telephone and face-to-face meetings for claim negotiation. It allows adjusters to make an offer without fearing that it will be used later to leverage higher settlements. It has also allowed the Comptroller’s Office to expand its operation to 24X7 without incurring additional expense. Attorneys and adjusters can settle cases after office hours.
In the claims business, the earlier a claim is settled, the less costly the outcome both in terms of the actual settlement, and claims handling and litigation expenses. Cybersettle was initially deployed in 2004. Through November 2007, 2,923 settlements have been made in Cybersettle totaling $27.7 million. The average settlement has been $9,462. The average settlement reached for similar claims not using Cybersettle was $27,869, resulting in an average savings of $18,407 per settlement. An estimated $53.8 million in total settlement costs have been saved with Cybersettle.
There are numerous beneficiaries from Cybersettle. The most significant group that benefits is the City’s tax payers because of the enormous settlement savings. The New York City Law Department also benefits by settling cases prior to litigation. They can concentrate their resources on trial preparation for significant cases as well as increased defense motion practice. The New York State Court System benefits by eliminating these cases from ever going to trial. Finally, plaintiffs benefit by a faster resolution of their cases.
Cash Flow
A new Cash Flow system was implemented to assist the <Bureau of Financial Analysis> in their monitoring of the daily cash balances in the City’s Central Treasury. The new system provides automated functionality to assist in ensuring that the City maintains adequate levels of cash throughout the fiscal year, and for forecasting the daily cash balances to determine the need and timing for seasonal borrowing.
PARIS
The Pension Asset Reconciliation Information System (PARIS) was implemented to support the accounting and reconciliation activities associated with approximately $120 billion of investments for the City’s five major pension systems. (NYCERS, Police, Fire, Department of Education, and Teachers). This system (Q2 from QED Financial Systems) automates the validation and reporting of all portfolio transactions maintained by the custody bank (Bank of New York/Mellon). It does comparisons of custody bank information to the transaction information reported by the investment managers. PARIS also supports the City’s short term trading operations, which invests approximately $5 billion per day.
Additionally, PARIS supports the Comptroller’s Investment Accounting Unit, which utilizes PARIS to analyze data and prepare journal entries for the five Pension Systems, and to assist in the preparation of each System’s Comprehensive Annual Financial Report <(CAFR)>. Another user is the Department of Finance which uses PARIS to track daily investments made by the Comptroller’s short term trading desk. Other metrics associated with the investment portfolio supported by PARIS include: 600 accounts; five Variable Supplemental Funds; 100 Investment Advisors; 66,000 Holdings; 59,000 transactions per month; and 1,000 corporate actions per month.
Pension Payroll Management System
The Pension Payroll System (PPS) which manages the disbursement of all pension payments via check and electronic funds transfer has been successfully converted to the new Pension Payroll Management System (PPMS) for all five pension systems (POLICE, FIRE, NYCERS, Department of Education, and Teachers). PPMS leverages some of the core functionality of the City’s payroll system and includes a web-based front end to support the user community’s interaction with the system.
Disaster Recovery
The Comptroller’s Office recently completed the development of an agency-wide business continuity and disaster recovery plan which ensures that our mission critical and mandated functions are restored with minimal interruption in the event of a major incident or disaster.
The plan will be used by the business units and the technology staff to assist them in restoring business operations and includes three major components: an Incident Management Plan, a Technology Restoration Plan, and Business Operations Plans for each of the 18 Bureaus in the Comptroller’s Office. The plan is also integrated with the disaster recovery capabilities of several key vendors who are an integral part of the Pension Asset Management functions of the Agency, including our Custody Bank (Bank of New York/Mellon) and QED Financial Systems.
The plan protects critical information and numerous application systems via replication technology to an alternate processing site, dedicated solely for our use. The plan also provides the ability to relocate key recovery personnel from the Comptroller’s Office to alternate safe locations which can be used as emergency operations centers.
Detailed testing and maintenance methodologies were developed as part of the plan. Maintenance is performed on a continual basis to reflect updates to the recovery environment, and changes to business functions, the organization, and technology within the Agency.
The Comptroller’s Office provides critical services to all those living, working, visiting, or doing business with New York City. All of these stakeholders benefit by ensuring within a short timeframe that business processes can be restored, and operations can continue in the event of a disaster.
Geographic Information Systems
GIS mapping capabilities offer a powerful tool for illustrating the impact of specific policies on the City’s neighborhoods. In December 2007, when the State authorized the closure of five hospitals in New York City, the Comptroller’s <Office of Policy Management> joined forces with the agency’s technology support team to create borough-based maps that showed the location of every hospital in the City, and the impact of potential closings. The maps included metrics for patients seen at each hospital’s emergency room and the number of in-patient clinic visits and hospital admissions. This geographic analysis clearly outlined that some neighborhoods had been hit hard by hospital closures, and, in several cases, the remaining hospitals slated for closure did not have excess capacity. This type of analysis revealed critical information regarding potential patient wait and travel times associated with emergency room in-patient, and out-patient services. The maps can assist advocates, planners and other stakeholders to assess the need for additional health care in specific communities.
Certificate of Residency
Students who reside in New York City and wish to attend a two year New York State Community College can receive tuition aid from New York City. The student must apply in person at the Comptrollers Office and verify their name and address with two forms of approved ID. Upon approval the student will be issued a Certificate of Residency which the student must show to his/her school upon registration. At the end of the each semester the school sends a voucher to the Comptroller’s Office to receive reimbursement of the students approved tuition assistance. Working with all of the community colleges in the State, our applications developers created an automated process that enabled the Comptroller’s Office to verify all student records and their status, which resulted in faster and more accurate reimbursements.
