Government Technology - April 2008 - (Page 41)

would have been too difficult and expensive. For example, Indiana’s human resources infrastructure discouraged altering job classifications, which the agency needed to do to implement new processes. “That was virtually impossible within the old system,” he said. “If the person whose job you changed didn’t like it, it could trigger an appeal process that would last 18 months, and you weren’t sure if you would win it in the end.” To transform the agency internally, Main would have needed a budget increase of more than $100 million. “It’s very hard for me to go to the Legislature and say I need a [multi]million dollar increase to my budget because the savings is her file to a different office. With electronically stored files, multiple caseworkers, each specializing in different types of benefits, ensure that clients receive all the appropriate entitlements. Some of those FSSA specialists might work in other offices around the state, said Brian Whitfield, IBM vice president for state and local government. “If someone had a unique case that required specialization, they had to fax and accept documents,” he said. “By moving to the electronic file, we can do workload balancing around the state.” In the past, if a caseworker lacked knowledge about certain programs, that caseworker’s client was at a disadvantage, said Main. IBM also established a centralized call center that’s open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. to Main said. “Then we had a couple more people arrested while we were in the process of going through the procurement.” The Migration Main was determined not to go through the same difficulties Texas faced when it tried to replace caseworker offices at the state’s Health and Human Services Commission (HHSC) with a centralized call center. Most of the Texas agency’s seasoned employees moved to jobs elsewhere after resisting the drastic culture change. This left the agency’s contractor to staff the center mostly with new employees who had the additional challenge of debugging the call center’s new eligibility application. “Texas modernized and thought they could replace seasoned caseworkers with $8-perhour people off the street,” Main said. “We had an incredibly educated work force — a lot of them with master’s degrees and bachelor’s degrees. The average tenure was more than 10 years, especially as you got into more rural areas. … We said, ‘These people are too valuable to let them go off to other places.’” C O N T I N U E D O N PAG E you run into, I can pick up a phone if I’m a client, and I can call, and whoever answers my call can open up my case from a computer and answer my questions.” Zach Main, director, Indiana Family and Social Services Administration “Now like normal customer service situations coming beyond when their next election cycle is going to be — and maybe beyond when this governor is going to be here,” Main said. However, the IBM deal slashed the 10-year cost of modernizing the agency down to $1.6 billion, which was $341 million below the agency’s current costs. That offered legislators a savings they could brag about to their constituents, said Main. The Solution IBM deployed a case management suite powered by Cúram Software that used the state’s legacy benefits calculation application, so the agency didn’t have to start from scratch. The solution implemented Web interfaces that let citizens conduct business online with the FSSA, which reduces the number of inperson trips to agency offices. All caseworkers on duty will be able to pull up a citizen’s file and provide services. In the past, an FSSA client was assigned to only one caseworker. If a client came to the office on a day his or her caseworker called in sick, he or she was out of luck. The agency stored client data in paper files, which only the assigned caseworkers touched. If a client moved, the agency had to mail his or answer clients’ questions. Gone are the days when clients could only call during bankers’ hours. The call center has access to all case files and uses an interactive voice response system to handle 40 percent of the calls. “Now like normal customer service situations you run into, I can pick up a phone if I’m a client, and I can call, and whoever answers my call can open up my case from a computer and answer my questions,” Main said. IBM also implemented a technology in which FSSA employees insert mailed paper applications into a system that scans them, creates an electronic document and routes the e-copy to the proper files. “Before, you’d have stuff coming in that was mailed, and you had to figure out manually where it needed to go, then put it with a hard-copy file,” Whitfield said. He said the fact that one case will often be handled by several different caseworkers would likely uncover and prevent fraud. In the past, caseworkers were usually in charge of their cases from beginning to end, making it easy for them to give benefits to ineligibles. “Over the last few years before we got here, we had more than 20 of our employees arrested for fraud charges, with an average amount stolen of roughly $50,000 each,” 51 Counting Change In May 2007, Indiana’s state Legislature passed a 44 cent cigarette tax increase, which beneﬁts the Family and Social Services Administration: • 33 cents: $11 million to fund immunizations for children; remaining funds to go to health insurance plan. • 2 cents: Funds will go toward an increase in physician reimbursement. • 1 cent: Funds to go toward an increase in dental reimbursement. • 5 cents: Funds to go toward other health initiatives, including $1.2 million for Indiana Tobacco Prevention and Cessation. • 3 cents: Funds to go toward an employer’s Section 125 plan. 41 http://www.govtech.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Government Technology - April 2008

Government Technology - April 2008 Contents Point of View Big Picture The Last Mile On the Scene Four Questions for... Freeze Frame How Safe Is Your Data? Easy Street Gadget Overload Indiana Overhaul First Person: A Better Bill Data Defense Strength in Numbers Public Storage Products Two Cents Spectrum Personal Computing signal:noise

Government Technology - April 2008

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