Welfare Reform

GAO examined the ability of the states' automated systems to provide information needed for state and local officials to help low-income individuals with children obtain employment and become economically independent. GAO found that better systems would help ensure that the intended goals and requirements of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), such as promoting work and enforcing the five-year time limit on aid, are met. Many of the obstacles states face may be best addressed at the state level, such as the need for collaboration among state and local agencies. However, coordinated federal action would help address several of the obstacles the states encounter as they take steps to improve their automated systems for social programs. However, no group or organization formally brings together the array of federal agencies involved in welfare reform to help devise solutions to the issues the states face in improving their welfare and welfare-related automated systems. Health and Human Services could play a pivotal role in orchestrating such a broad-based collaborative approach by bringing representatives of key federal agencies and other organizations together to work on these issues.

GAO noted that: (1) although automated systems in the states GAO examined support welfare reform in many ways, a number of these systems have major limitations in one or more of three key areas; (2) with respect to information needs for case management, the major shortcoming is an inability to obtain data on individual TANF recipients from some of the agencies serving them, including job assistance agencies; (3) this situation makes it difficult for TANF case managers to arrange needed services, ensure that the services are provided, and respond quickly when problems arise; (4) officials in the states, especially those at the local level, said that it is sometimes difficult or impossible to query automated systems to obtain information for planning service strategies for their overall TANF caseloads, such as information on the number of adults with no prior work experience; (5) automated systems have shortcomings for program oversight purposes, specifically, they do not provide enough information to support enforcement of the 5-year TANF time limit and to monitor the employment progress of TANF recipients overall in some instances; (6) states' automated systems projects embody a range of approaches to expanding the ability of system users to obtain and analyze data from multiple sources; (7) some projects are designed primarily to support TANF case managers and other frontline workers in providing more coordinated delivery of services; (8) other projects, geared more to improving the ability of program managers to collect and analyze data from different programs, involve developing new query tools and databases that are expected to help program managers with key tasks, such as determining program results and assessing the performance of service providers; (9) states face a number of obstacles to improving their automated systems, such as the magnitude of changes in the mission and operations of welfare agencies due to welfare reform, the inherent difficulties associated with successfully managing information technology projects, competition with the private sector to recruit and retain information technology staff, and the complexity of obtaining federal funding for systems projects that involve multiple agencies; (10) the federal government could take various actions to help overcome such obstacles, such as providing more information on best practices for managing information technology; and (11) in this way, the federal government could serve a facilitative role, in addition to its regulatory role, in helping states improve automated systems for social programs.

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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