Louisiana Department of Insurance

Project: CATS

The Comprehensive Agenda Tracking System (CATS) is an application developed for the Rating Division of the Louisiana Department of Insurance, and the Louisiana Insurance Rating Commission, using Microsoft VisualBasic, SQL Server 2000 and Microsoft Office (Word and Excel). The system, which replaced a legacy Unix system, tracks the flow of work through the Rating Division in the form of requests for hearings (about 200 monthly) before the Insurance Rating Commission.

The system has many embedded time-dependencies, with key dates being captured then used throughout the Hearing preparation process to answer queries from interested parties and eventually to prepare the official agenda for the Rating Commission. The monthly agendas are placed on the Department’s web server and are available (as produced by the system in their original form) to the general public at the Insurance Department’s web site (www.ldi.state.la.us).

Some technical features built in to the system include the complete, seamless integration of Microsoft Word and Excel into the application. Performance reports for the legislature are built using Visual Basic and SQL then populated into an Excel spreadsheet. All Action Letters, Agenda documents, and other correspondence generated by the system are formatted and published using Microsoft Word, giving the user a chance to view and edit before printing or e-mailing.

Commissioner of Insurance J. Robert Wooley has stated, “The new Comprehensive Agenda Tracking System has been a real asset in our ability to timely process and evaluate industry requests for new products, rate adjustments and other regulated activity. It is a big step forward in our effort to modernize the Department.”

Commenting on the value of information now available through the system, Chief Actuary Rich Piazza said the “system significantly improves the way our staff manages the flow of petitions for review of new products, rate adjustments, changes in language, and other requests. The quality and quantity of historical information now kept in the database, including graphic and spreadsheet data, makes the system worth having. The CAT system has reduced staff time and lowered the cost of preparing for Rating Commission hearings. For example, the official Rating Commission agenda is now created entirely with the system in MS Word format and then published on the Department website make it available immediately to the public (at no charge). Before, we printed hundreds of copies of a thick agenda document then mailed them at considerable cost to the public.”