Welfare to Work

JOBS Automated Systems Do Not Focus on Program's Employment Objective Gao ID: AIMD-94-44 June 8, 1994

The Job Opportunities and Basic Skills Training (JOBS) program is intended to help people avoid long-term welfare dependence by providing the education, training, work experiences, and services needed to obtain jobs. Although additional effort will be needed by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the states to correct lingering data problems and incorporate further automation, the states have made progress developing computer systems to support the JOBS program. These systems, however, are narrowly focused on tracking program participants and collecting and reporting data to HHS, missing the greater opportunity that the systems could offer. Despite the millions of dollars in welfare costs that could be saved by moving people off welfare and into jobs, HHS failed to determine how information technology could best be applied to help achieve this objective.

GAO found that: (1) ACF has not provided adequate guidance for the states to develop effective information systems or described how systems can be designed to help caseworkers find employment for program participants; (2) ACF system development guidance focuses only on requirements for data collection and reporting on program participants and the states are designing their systems to meet only those requirements; (3) ACF has not determined how technology can best be used to support programmatic objectives; (4) listing available jobs or information on the kinds of jobs needed in the community would help caseworkers find employment for participants and tailor training programs to increase their marketability; (5) most states and territories have automated JOBS information systems under development, but the kind of system and the degree of automation varies by state; and (6) JOBS data are inconsistent, inaccurate, and incomplete because almost half of the states' systems do not collect all the data needed or have all the functions required by ACF.

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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