EFT/EDI Child Support Payments

Teleconference

Minutes from the Federal/State Agencies EFT/EDI Child Support Payments Project Teleconference, January 21, 2004

Participants:

The bi-monthly Federal Agency/State EFT/EDI Child Support Payments Project conference call was held on Wednesday, January 21st at 2 p.m., ET. The following Federal agencies participated in the call: the Department of the Treasury's Financial Management Service (FMS), General Services Administration (GSA), the Department of Interior's National Business Center (DOI's NBC), the Federal Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE), Health and Humans Services (HHS) Payroll Office, and the Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS). The following states participated in the call: Colorado, Delaware, Florida, Iowa, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Mississippi, North Carolina, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Texas, Washington, Wisconsin, Wyoming. Lovenia Murray of FMS facilitated the call.

Federal Agency Issues

• General Services Administration (GSA)

GSA reported that their agency had converted to electronic payments for child support with 47 states and conversion problems were routine. Case reconciliation was performed with each state before converting to electronic payments.

• Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS)

Unlike many other Federal agencies, DFAS has its own disbursing authority, so their checks are not processed through FMS. DFAS reported that they are sending child support payments from retired military personnel and Department of Defense (DoD) civil service employees in the CTX 820 remittance format. DFAS is sending to 26 state disbursement units (SDUs) and will soon send to another seven. DFAS will begin sending child support payments from active duty Navy by March 2004.

• DFAS CTX 820 Format Issue

When DFAS began sending child support payments from retired military personnel in the CTX 820 remittance format, several states found what seemed to be errors. The "error" was traced to DFAS entering "DED" in the GS functional group header.

The "DED" in the GS (the actual data field is GS03) is meant to be used as a functional group receiver ID to indicate to DFAS that this CTX 820 Remittance file is a child support payment rather than a vendor remittance payment (RMR). This is in accordance with the ANSI X12 rules, which govern the EDI format lay-out.

Some states systems incorrectly recognized this DED as an actual child support deduction segment rather than an identifier in a functional group header. Some states may have to re-program to account for the presence of "DED" in the GS functional group header. It was suggested to look for a backslash before the actual DED deduction segment and an asterisk after DED. An example of a typical CTX 820 garnishment transaction is attached.

• Department of Interior's National Business Center (NBC)

NBC reported that DOI has been performing case reconciliation with the states and will begin testing with PA at the end of January. NBC will be sending child support payments in the CTX 820 remittance format. DOI's FEIN will not appear in the Company Batch/Header record but will appear in the N1 and N2 segments of the CTX 820.

• Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)

HHS reported that they have been performing case reconciliation with the states and will begin to send test files of child support payments within a few weeks.

• U.S. Postal Service (USPS)

The USPS reported that they are sending electronic payments to almost every state.

• Importance of the Case Reconciliation Process

OCSE reminded states that the case reconciliation process is lengthy but very important. The Federal agencies performing case reconciliation are finding that up to half the cases require a change to the Case ID or redirection to the SDU. OCSE urged Federal agencies and states to include all cases, IV-D and non-IV-D, when performing case reconciliation.

The next Federal Agency/State EFT/EDI teleconference call will take place on March 17th at 2 p.m. ET.