Child Support Enforcement

Certification Process for State Information Systems Gao ID: AIMD-98-134 June 15, 1998

Certification guidance issued by the Office of Child Support Enforcement addresses the system requirements of the Family Support Act of 1998 and the Department of Health and Human Service's implementing regulations. GAO found that the Office has administered the certification process consistently across states since it began certifying child support enforcement systems in 1993. It has used the same guidance for certification reviews and done reviews that were similar in scope and length for each level of certification. Although the Office published many certification reports on the results of its certification reviews, its reporting was not always consistent. For example, six preliminary certification review reports inaccurately described the criteria against which the systems' financial components were measured. As of March 1998, the Office had either certified or conditionally certified 25 of the 54 child support enforcement systems. The Office did 13 additional reviews and was preparing certification reports for those systems.

GAO noted that: (1) certification guidance issued by the Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE) addresses the system requirements of the Family Support Act of 1988 and HHS' implementing regulations; (2) analysis of the certification process shows that OCSE has administered this process consistently across states since it began certifying child support enforcement systems in 1993; (3) it has used the same guidance for certification reviews and conducted reviews that were similar in scope and length for each level of certification; (4) while OCSE published many certification reports on the results of its certification reviews, its reporting was not always consistent; (5) as of March 31, 1998, OCSE had either certified or conditionally certified 25 of the 54 child support enforcement systems; and (6) OCSE had also conducted 13 additional reviews and was preparing certification reports for those systems.

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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