Profiles in Government: Teacher Retirement System

The Teacher Retirement System of Texas (TRS), the public pension plan responsible for financing more than 1.9 million public education and higher education employees and retirees’ retirement benefits, has listed several IT-related goals in its strategic plan for the coming biennium. Here is more information about the agency, including who leads its IT department, how many staff the department employs and its tech-related goals for the biennium.

FAST FACTS

Budget: TRS’ overall budget is $7.8 billion for the biennium, according to HB 1. Its capital budget includes $33.1 million for information resource technology acquisitions and $2.1 million for data center and shared technology services.

Leadership: Chris Cutler is the department’s CIO.

Staff: The agency has 1,047 full-time employees for Fiscal Year 2024. Below are tech-related goals listed in the department’s FY 2023-2027 strategic plan:

• Develop, maintain and enhance IT systems and infrastructure in support of TRS business needs
• Implement modern information systems across all lines of business with priority on modernization of legacy systems and strategic digital transformation
• Optimize security architecture and operational capabilities to thwart advanced threats and mitigate vulnerabilities
• Improve and enhance the reporting employer portal
• Re-engineer TRS-ActiveCare to better meet employer needs
• Use data analytics tools to provide assurance on health-care claims compliance

TRS has already released solicitations for some of its larger IT projects of the fiscal year, including requests for a total trust risk platform, consultation on its ServiceNow platforms and a new website content management platform.