EFT/EDI Child Support Payments

Teleconference

Minutes from the Federal/State Agencies EFT/EDI Child Support Payments Project Teleconference, May 18, 2005

Participants

The bi-monthly Federal Agency/State EFT/EDI Child Support Payments Project teleconference meeting was held on Wednesday, May 18 at 2 p.m., ET. 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 National Finance Center (NFC), and representatives from the Defense Finance and Accounting Services' (DFAS). The following states participated in the teleconference: AL, AZ, CA, CO, CT, DC, FL, HI, IA, ID, IL, IN, KY, LA, MI, MS, MT, NC, ND, OR, PA, SD, TX, UT, VA, WA, WI, WY. 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.

Federal Agency Updates

The National Finance Center (NFC) reported that would be processing the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's e-payments for child support payments in pay period 10 for the June 6 pay cycle. This involves appropriately 200 payments. They have taken over payroll functions for two more agencies: Transportation Security Agency (55,000 employees) and the Coast Guard. They are projecting August for the conversion of these payments.

Betty Harvey of FMS reported that they still hope to set up a pilot with the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), Pay.Gov, and some states for sending electronic child support payments from the OPM benefit payment file.

FMS reported that the Social Security Administration (SSA) and FMS have been working with IL and MI, and plan to convert their new orders for child support in November. SSA hopes to be able to send all of their child support payments electronically using their new payroll system by the end of 2006. OCSE asked which states accept alimony-only payments for custodial parents: CO, CT, MI, ND, NY, OR, UT, and WA responded that they processed these payments through their state disbursement units (SDUs).

DFAS Navy Child Support Payment Restitution Issue

Jody Pender of PA's SDU reported that they had received 21 letters from DFAS, asking them to return monies sent by DFAS on behalf of Navy personnel. These were active duty Navy members who were actually no longer in the service at the time the payments were sent to the SDU, and thus not entitled to receive credit for the payments made by DFAS during that period. The letters ask for restitution within 30 days and indicate that there will be administrative and punitive fees assessed if the money is not promptly returned.

Jody explained that the money had been disbursed to the custodial parents several years ago and could not be recouped from them without their consent. Federal law does not allow SDUs to offset future payments to recover back payments the custodial parents received in-error. She suggested that DFAS should pursue the actual Navy service members rather than the SDUs.

Roger Pinta, Debra Keane, Reginal Butler, Frank Hrouda, and Loretta Longo were on the teleconference from DFAS. Roger explained that these restitution letters were a result of an internal audit of Navy payments between 1999 and 2003. They affect approximately 4,500 payments from approximately 2,200 Active Duty Navy service members. DFAS is required by law to try to recoup the money. He further indicated that probably every SDU would receive one or more of these letters.

UT and MS also indicated that they had received the same letter and, like the PA SDU, had disbursed the money to the custodial families.

OCSE will set up a teleconference with DFAS to work toward resolving this issue.

Financial Institution Data Match (FIDM) Application Identifiers

OCSE encouraged the states to program to receive/send the FIDM application identifiers because banks have been expressing interest in sending asset seizure payments electronically. Wendy Cole-Deardorff of WA State reported that their SDU is working with several WA State banks, both to send the asset seizure form electronically and to receive the payments electronically. WA would like to know of other states willing to program the FIDM application identifiers. Bilinda McKay-Johnson of CO reported that CO is also working with financial institutions both to send the asset seizure form electronically and to receive the payments electronically.

DFAS Allocation Issue

Mary Francis reported a problem with some payments from DFAS Indianapolis (Army) that is arriving without a separate addendum record per payment. Loretta Longo of DFAS offered to work with her to resolve this.

Next Federal Agency/State EFT/EDI Teleconference

The next EFT/EDI teleconference is scheduled for July 20, 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.