Interstate Child Support Enforcement

Computer Network Contract Not Ready To Be Awarded Gao ID: IMTEC-92-8 October 23, 1991

Uncollected child support payments now total $4 billion annually. To improve enforcement of interstate child support payments, the Department of Health and Human Services has unveiled a new nationwide telecommunications network to share case data with the states. GAO supports replacing the existing paper-intensive information exchange process with an automated one. Shortcuts in the development of the system, however, call into question its appropriateness and cost effectiveness. The demonstration project from which the network evolved did not adequately compare other options for solving interstate child support enforcement, and both the alternatives analysis and cost-benefit analysis were flawed. Further, future users of the network were not adequately consulted, and key issues that will influence the future success or failure of the network have not been addressed. GAO concludes that proceeding with the contract award at this time entails unjustified risks.

GAO found that: (1) OCSE planned to award a contract for CSENET design, development, and implementation in October 1991, but cannot do so because it failed to adequately follow sound systems development principles; (2) OCSE has not demonstrated that CSENET is the most feasible and effective automated approach for increasing interstate collections and improving the child support enforcement program; (3) CSENET will have minimal impact on increasing interstate collections because it will not provide the additional information to help locate an absent parent; and (4) OCSE has not developed the accurate work-load information to define automation capacity and performance requirements, adequately involved system users in CSENET planning, or defined technical requirements and provided the states with guidance on the interface with state systems and CSENET limitations.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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