Government Technology - April 2008 - (Page 40)

health & human services S TAT E | LO C A L | F E D E R A L j j Synopsis: The Indiana Family and Social Services Administration (FSSA) outsourced operations to streamline business processes and improve eligibility determination accuracy. Overhaul F or decades, pursuing benefits from Indiana social services was a test of will, according to Zach Main, director of the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration (FSSA). Citizens who needed services had to navigate a time-consuming bureaucracy before receiving benefits. Benefits disbursement errors and eligibility determination blunders also plagued the agency, costing the state millions of dollars. Before taking his position in 2005, Main oversaw construction of the Indiana Republican Party’s Voter Vault database. The model he implemented is now the standard for Republican voter databases in all 50 states. Main outsourced the FSSA’s case management operations to IBM, which revamped processes and technologies to decrease eligibility inaccuracies and eliminate unnecessary steps during the delivery of services. The pilot program is already in progress. Indiana Agency: Indiana FSSA. Technologies: Electronic file storage and management, online interfaces, interactive voice response systems. Contact: Lauren Auld, director of media relations, Indiana FSSA, lauren.auld@fssa .in.gov, 317/232-4641. The Indiana FSSA outsources case management, opening new channels for citizens and improving efficiency. county,” he said. “We found we had about 2,000 caseworkers out there, and we realized we actually had about 2,000 ways of doing business. Every caseworker within that system operated independently of the rest.” Counties managed much of Indiana’s family and social services until the state consolidated those functions by creating the FSSA in 1991. However, in 2004, individual FSSA offices still operated with their own rules as if they were still county offices, said Main. The FSSA also mismanaged money. Main discovered that 12 percent of the time, the agency made errors when qualifying people for food stamps or determining the dollar amounts they could receive. The agency also incorrectly determined eligibility 36 percent of the time when disbursing Medicaid benefits, usually giving them to ineligible recipients. “That’s the Medicaid you give to elderly people who need to be in a nursing home but can’t afford a nursing home,” Main said. “The state pays for their nursing home to the tune of about $3,000 a month for the rest of their lives. As you can see, those decisions can run into hundreds of thousands of dollars for just one eligibility decision.” Inheriting a Mess Main toured the organization’s 107 offices after joining the agency. He found incompatible bureaucracies that forced citizens to travel more than once to government offices for social services that often took two weeks to initiate. “We had taken the people who, in many ways, had the least time to give and the least amount of paid time off, and we were making them jump through way too many hoops to get the assistance they were entitled to,” he said. Main soon discovered the administration’s business processes were more inconsistent than he and his team originally thought. “If you walked into an office in one county, it would be a completely different experience than if you had walked into an office in another Bypassing Culture Main decided to outsource the FSSA’s services to IBM because a major internal change APR_08 40 BY A N D Y O P S A H L | F E AT U R E S E D I T O R 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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