EFT/EDI Child Support Payments

Teleconference

Minutes from the Federal/State Agencies EFT/EDI Child Support Payments Project Teleconference, September 28, 2006

Participants:

The following Federal agencies participated in the teleconference: Department of the Treasury's Financial Management Service (FMS): Washington, DC and Austin; Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS): Cleveland and Indianapolis; Social Service Administration; U.S. Coast Guard, and the U.S. Postal Service. The following states/stakeholders were represented on the teleconference: AL, AZ, CA, DC, DE, FL, HI, ID, KS, LA, ME, MI, MS, MT, NC, ND, NE, NH, NM, NY, OR, PA, PR, RI, TX, UT, VA, WI, WV, WY, APA, and Stop & Shop Company.

The bi-monthly Federal Agency/State EFT/EDI Child Support Payments teleconference was held on Thursday, September 28 at 2 p.m., ET. 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.

Federal agency updates:

SSA: The Social Security Administration (SSA) has begun sending its beneficiary payments (attached for child support) electronically to IL and MI. It is also doing case reconciliation with CA and VA and hopes to begin sending electronic child support payments to those states by January 2007. SSA prefers to work with states that use the Social Security number (SSN) of the beneficiary rather than the case ID as the primary identifier. Interested states may contact Gary Sievers at gary.sievers@ssa.gov. SSA estimates that it is sending 200,000+ child support paper checks per month from beneficiaries' payments. They are working towards converting all of the check payments to EFT/EDI in calendar year 2007.

DFAS: The Defense Finance and Accounting Service (DFAS), Cleveland reported that DFAS has received approval to work on converting the voluntary allotment payments to the CTX 820 with the DED Child Support Addendum Segment. (Currently, voluntary allotments attached for child support are being sent by paper check or by direct deposit in the PPD format). One issue is how to identify new voluntary allotments initiated by individual service personnel whose new orders are not yet on any state automated child support system. A state needs to set up each order on its automated system so that an incoming payment can be recognized and posted correctly.

California's State Disbursement Unit (SDU) Implementation

The CA SDU is prepared to receive federal agencies' child support payments electronically. Federal agencies interested in beginning the conversion process are encouraged to contact Rick Barto at Rick.barto@ftb.ca.gov or Mike Clements at mclements@fdgs.com.

Next federal agency/state EFT/EDI teleconference:

The next EFT/EDI teleconference is scheduled for November 15th, 2006 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.