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CalSTRS Benefit Connect go‑live set for Sept. 25, 2025; UAT at 77% and staff outline cutover steps
Summary
CalSTRS staff told the board Benefit Connect is tentatively scheduled to go live Sept. 25, 2025. User acceptance testing is 77% passed; staff described a phased shutdown of member and employer portals, a legacy read‑only window and a data conversion period of up to 13 calendar days, and communications to members and employers beginning next week.
CalSTRS officials updated the board on the pension solution (Benefit Connect) implementation and said the program remains on a tentative go‑live timeline in late September.
Ashish Jain, chief technology officer and project sponsor, said the project is in its final phase and the team expects to meet near‑term milestones ahead of a September deployment. Anthony Sweeney, pension solution project director, said user acceptance testing (UAT) began in September 2024: "We're currently at 77% passed," he told the board, and the team expects to finish remaining test scripts by the scheduled UAT completion in mid‑July.
The implementation calendar presented to the board shows an early shutdown of the secure employer website, the CalSTRS member self‑service portal and the member information/contact center to allow processing of in‑flight transactions before the legacy system moves to inquiry/read‑only mode. Data conversion from legacy to Benefit Connect will begin when the legacy system is placed in read‑only mode and can take up to 13 calendar days (nine business days) to extract, convert and validate data; the go‑no‑go decision will be made by executive committees based on defined scorecards.
Project and oversight staff said a dry run has already been completed and lessons learned will be validated in a second dry run. Independent oversight (Guidehouse) said it is comfortable with the programmatic approach while noting the importance of qualitative review of any outstanding UAT test cases and their implications for go‑live functionality.
Board members asked about member and employer communications, contingencies for payroll timing, and the plan for callers during the cutover. Anthony Sweeney said communications will begin the week after the meeting; staff emphasized the contact center will remain available during the migration and that retiree payroll for October 1 will be processed out of the legacy system as planned.
