EFT/EDI Child Support Payments

Teleconference

Minutes from the Federal/State Agencies EFT/EDI Child Support Payments Project Teleconference, May 19, 2004

Participants:

The bi-monthly Federal Agency/State EFT/EDI Child Support Payments Project conference meeting was held on Wednesday, May 19th at 2 p.m., EST. The following Federal agencies participated in the teleconference: 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, the U.S. Postal Service (USPS), and the Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS). The following states and or state affiliates participated in the teleconference: CO, Los Angeles County, MN, OR, PA, FL, KS, MS, NC, WA, HI, ME, ND PA, WI, IA, MI, NE, SD, WY. Lovenia Murray of FMS facilitated the teleconference and reminded participants to register for each teleconference at FMS's web site at http://fms.treas.gov/csp/confcall/index.html.

Federal Agency Conversion Update

• GSA has converted most states, and is still working with MD and NY. GSA will undertake case reconciliation with CA and SC even though they do not have centralized state disbursement units (SDUs). GSA will be adding the non-custodial parent's name to the DED Child Support Addendum segment in June 2004. Several states commented that the non-custodial name is used for their second level verification of data file when there is a mismatch between the Social Security number (SSN) and the Case ID.
• DOI reported that they have completed all but 12 states (not counting CA and SC). In addition, they also still need to perform case reconciliation with PR and the VI. They are interested in sending payments to the four counties in CA, which can receive them.
• DFAS reported that they are sending electronic child support payments from retired and civilian military personnel to 41 states. They are in the midst of converting the child support payments from their active duty and reserve military.
• DHHS reported that they are sending electronic child support payments to seven states and will soon add another 11. They hope to complete case reconciliation by October 2004.
• USPS reported that they are sending electronic child support payments to all the states except CA and SC. They are not yet sending electronic payments to the territories.

Benefit Agencies

OCSE reported that the Office of Personnel Management's (OPM) federal agency conversion is still going on. The child support payments from benefit programs (the Social Security Administration (SSA), the Railroad Retirement Board (RRB), and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA)) are still going out by paper check. FMS is working with the benefit agencies, and investigating various means for them to convert to electronic payments before December 31, 2004.

Several states requested a list of federal agency conversions and implementation schedules for EFT/EDI. FMS indicated that the agency conversion schedule is available on the FMS web site, and updated as agency conversion dates are provided to FMS. The agencies' schedule of implementation for the states is generally provided to the states by the agencies when they began their conversion. OCSE will provide the agencies' schedule of implementation for the states, as the information is made available to them.

Banking Information on the Order/Notice to Withholding Income for Child Support

Someone asked whether the Order/Notice to Withhold Income for Child Support contains banking information. There are fields for entering banking information, but states do not want to include their routing transit numbers and their bank account numbers for fear of unauthorized debits to their accounts or for fear that they will receive payments, which they cannot identify. The form has been revised recently and having heard no comments on the banking information from states or users, still contains space for routing transit and bank account numbers. The revised form will be disseminated via an action transmittal in the near future.

DFAS Twice-in-a-Month Payment Issue

There was considerable discussion of the last two DFAS monthly payments, which both arrived in April. The second payment, which had an Effective/Settlement Date of April 30, 2004, could have been distributed to arrears or to the state (for TANF recovery) depending on the case. The states were in agreement that this second-in-a-month payment presents a definite problem for their systems, requiring them to look for the payments, hold the payments, and/or change the date of the payments, all processes which work against the goal of automatic posting and a streamlined electronic process. Moreover, if the state is not able to rectify the problem, the custodial parent may not receive the monthly payment and the non-custodial parent will be considered in arrears on his/her payments, causing certain enforcement remedies (e.g., being reported to credit card agencies) to begin. OCSE will follow up concerning DFAS pay date procedures to see whether the various pay branches can program their systems to create a "forward" Effective/Settlement Date (for the second payment) whenever there is a month with two payments scheduled.

Next Teleconference

The next Federal Agency/State EFT/EDI Child Support Payments teleconference will be Wednesday, July 21st at 2:00 p.m. ET. Lovenia Murray asked the participants whether they see a value in continuing the teleconference meetings now that the federal agencies are in the conversion process. The responding states indicated that the federal/state agency teleconference meetings are effective and would like to continue meeting, at least until after the first of 2005 when SSNs are scheduled to be removed from paper checks.