EFT/EDI Child Support Payments

Teleconference

Minutes from the Federal/State Agencies EFT/EDI Child Support Payments Project Teleconference, July 20, 2005

Participants

Federal Agency Updates

The National Finance Center (NFC) reported that they are taking over payroll functions for the Transportation Security Agency, and Coast Guard the end of August (approximately 55,000, and 7,000 civilian employees respectively). NFC will be contacting the states for case reconciliation, in preparation for converting the child support check payments to e-payments in September/October 2005. They have not converted any counties in CA.

Amtrak reported that they have converted four counties in California: Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside, and San Mateo. They are still working to convert a few more states. If any state is interested in having its Amtrak payments converted, please contact Kathleen Farrow at farrowk@amtrak.com.

Lovenia Murray reported that the Social Security Administration is scheduled to begin converting its new child support garnishment payments in December 2005. The Railroad Retirement Board plans to begin conversion of child support payments in October of this year. The Office of Personnel Management will convert its child support payments as part of its new pay system in 2009. The Department of Veterans Affairs' (VA) payroll is migrating to DFAS for services. VA's garnishment payments will be merged with its payroll.

DP suggested as application identifier for DFAS voluntary allotments

MO has suggested that when DFAS eventually gets a new system and can send the voluntary allotments electronically, it might be useful to code the voluntary allotments using DP as the application identifier. The reasoning behind this is that the payments are coming from direct payers and would enable states to differentiate voluntary allotments from income withholding. Some states indicated no preference; others indicated that they would prefer that DFAS use CS, which is how employers identify their child support payments. A few liked the idea as long as they had time to program for it. Please send further comments to Nancy Benner at nbenner@acf.hhs.gov.

DFAS Navy child support payment restitution issue

The DFAS restitution letters (sent in May) were a result of an internal audit of Navy payments between 1999 and 2003. They affect approximately 4,500 payments from approximately 2,200 Navy service members. DFAS is required by law to try to recoup the money. Initially it was assumed that the letters would be sent to the state disbursement units (SDUs), but as it turns out, most of them went to the counties because at the time the payments were sent, many SDUs had not yet been implemented.

Rod Winn and Loretta Longo were on the call from DFAS. Rod Winn expanded on the guidance given previously by DFAS. Because the restitution letters went primarily to counties rather than to the state disbursement units (SDUs), many states cannot provide DFAS with a list of payments because they don't know what payments are in question. Rod Winn advised states to write a letter to DFAS explaining the burden of providing a list and indicating that all payments were disbursed to custodial families. If, however, any DFAS monies have became part of undistributed collections, those monies should be returned to DFAS. States should address their letters to:

Mr. Roger Pinta
Director, Disbursing Operations
DFAS
1240 East Ninth Street
Cleveland, OH 44199

Next federal agency/state EFT/EDI teleconference

The next EFT/EDI teleconference is scheduled for September 21, 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 is allocated.