EFT/EDI Child Support Payments

Teleconference

Minutes from the Federal/State Agencies EFT/EDI Child Support Payments Project Teleconference, March 16, 2005

Participants

The bi-monthly Federal Agency/State EFT/EDI Child Support Payments Project teleconference meeting was held on Wednesday, March 16, at 2 p.m., EST. The following federal agencies participated in the teleconference: the Department of the Treasury's Financial Management Service (FMS), the Federal Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE central office and CSENet representative), the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), and representatives from the Defense Finance and Accounting Services' (DFAS) Kids 1st. The following State participated in the teleconference: CA, CT, DC, GA, HI, IA, ID, IL, KS, KY, ME, MI, MO, MS, MT, NC, NE, NY, OH, OR, SD, UT, VA, WA, WY, and Region VII. Lovenia Murray of FMS facilitated the meeting and reminded participants to register in advance for each teleconference at FMS's web site at http://fms.treas.gov/csp/confcall/index.html. Minutes from the meeting are also posted at this web site.

DFAS Kids 1st

Representatives from DFAS's Kids 1st explained that their project provides a way for states to send their income-withholding orders electronically to DFAS, by batch or by individual order. States may now also use Kids 1st to send income-withholding orders to the Department of Energy (DOE) since DFAS now handles DOE's payroll function. Kids 1st has implemented a few technical changes because of the newly revised Notice/Order to Withhold Income for Child Support. When OCSE implements its electronic income-withholding order, Kids 1st expects to change to that format. To sign up for Kids 1st, contact Megan Huber at megan.huber@dfas.mil or (216) 204-3375. For technical questions, contact Sandra Ferrone at Sandra.ferrone@dfas.mil.

OPM's proposal to send child support payments by direct deposit

OPM presented its proposal to send child support payments electronically in the PPD (direct deposit) format and transmit remittance data via Pay.Gov, FMS's Internet government portal. OPM is currently remitting 2.5 million federal employee pension/annuity payments electronically per month, but its approximately 3,900 monthly child support payments are still being remitted by paper check. This is because OPM has an old mainframe and lacks resources to reprogram to send payments in the CCD+ or the CTX 820 file format. Further, OPM's child support payments are mixed with the pension accounts and not easily identified as child support payments. During the discussion that followed, most states indicated that they did not want to receive payments in the PPD format because not receiving the remittance information at the same time might result in unidentified or late payments, unbalanced accounts, and higher fees if their banks were given the task of downloading the remittance data from Pay.Gov. A few states indicated that they already receive some payments in PPD and were willing to work with OPM. FMS will explore the possibility of a pilot with OPM, Pay.Gov, and a few state disbursement units (SDUs).

Voluntary allotments from DFAS sent electronically

If your state is receiving voluntary allotments by direct deposit (PPD format) and this presents problems in identifying/posting payments, please contact Nancy Benner at nbenner@acf.hhs.gov.

2005 ACH Rules

The 2005 ACH Rules are available through NACHA (http://www.nacha.org) for $55 or through NACHA's regional member associations. To find the appropriate regional ACH member association, go to NACHA's web site, click on "Membership" at the top and then click on "Regional Member Association" in the left sidebar. This will take you to a map. Click on your state, and you will be given information on the regional ACH member association for your state.

Next teleconference on EFT/EDI child support payments

The next EFT/EDI teleconference is scheduled for May 18, 2005, at 2:00 p.m. ET. States are reminded to register for the teleconference at http://fms.treas.gov/csp/confcall/index.html to ensure enough lines are allocated.