Challenge
Teacher Retirement System: Dallas Independent School District (DISD) ranks as the 12th largest school district in the United States and the second largest in Texas. It serves over 150,000 students and employs approximately 20,000 full-time and part-time staff members. DISD employees had the option to participate in the Teacher Retirement System (TRS), a public retirement plan designed for employees of Texas-supported public schools, colleges, and universities.
Employees can choose to save for retirement using TRS instead of Social Security. DISD matches employees’ contributions to TRS each month.
Managing the intricacies of the Teacher Retirement System (TRS) was a complex challenge for organizations like DISD. With its unique rules governing eligibility, contributions, benefits, and re-employment, DISD needed a solution to efficiently manage all aspects of the TRS program in a centralized system.
TRS has strict rules about the data DISD must send. This required coordination between different departments at DISD, like HR, Payroll, Benefits, Labor Distribution, GL, and TRS.
Solution
We helped DISD implement a customized Teacher Retirement System to streamline data management and automate reporting. This system serves as a central hub for all TRS-related data and generates required reports automatically. Here are the activities our team analyzed, designed, and built DISD’s TRS system:
- Identified and consolidated TRS data from multiple departments and created a central data repository.
- Automated the upload/update process on a scheduled basis.
- Developed a user-friendly system for managing TRS data using Oracle forms and a self-service module. This system allows for manual adjustments of records and batches.
- Implement the security through responsibility level access control.
- Streamlined reporting process by automating the generation and secure transfer of TRS Statutory reports and Data extracts.
- Provided capability to handle/correct the warnings/errors received from TRS after the submission of the data
- Developed reconciliation reports at each department level
This complex project involved multiple phases to implement a comprehensive TRS data management and reporting solution. We developed a single-phase module for data maintenance and reporting, followed by a multi-phase approach to address reconciliation requirements for different departments. The solution integrated with various systems and included extensive reporting capabilities to meet TRS standards. We used PL/SQL, RDF, Oracle BI Publisher, and Oracle Forms to build this solution.
Outcome
Users benefited from a centralized TRS data management system that provided a single point of access to all relevant information. Integration with DISD systems improved data accuracy and synchronization. Department-level reconciliation ensured up-to-date data through localized knowledge. Automation streamlined processes, reduced manual data entry, and fostered clearer communication between departments.
