Texas child support disbursement unit established in 90 days

Today, Feb 2001

Centralized processing has been the key to managing increased volumes of child support payments.

The State of Texas has centralized is child support payments with the establishment of a start-up Child Support Disbursement Unit. The timef rame from the signing of the contract with J&B Software (www.tmsimage. com/215-641-1500) and Lockheed IMS (www.lmims.com) to the start of production was only 90 days.

The state Office of the Attorney General (OAG) has mandated the development, implementation and operation of a Child Support Dis- bursement Unit (CSDU) to handle child support payments. The State of Texas previously had the OAG and the individual counties handle these payments. The OAG and each county had its own separate system and its own separate database. The total volume of payments often reaches one million a month, with as much as 65% of this volume being exception item processing. The OAG also requires a 24-hour turnaround for disbursement of payments to recipients.

To accomplish the start-up of a new CSDU, the State of Texas chose Lockheed IMS and J&B Software on the basis of "technology, experience, and price," according to John Knych, Lockheed IMS's deputy project director for operations.

Texas's new CSDU uses three Unisys DP500s, three Kleindienst SC35 scanners, and two Kleindienst SC60H scanners, along with a version of J&B's TMS Image software that had been previously developed especially for child support payments. The Texas CSDU version of the TMS Image child support module also includes the TMS MICR Database, OCR, and ICR/CAR modules, and derogatory databases. This was the first TMS Image installation to use the Kleindienst SC60H, which was incorporated into the system with the DP500s and the SC35s, both of which have been used in previous SDU projects for other states.

Texas has two general classes of payments, differentiated according to service level. The CSDU went "live" on schedule at the beginning of July, and is currently processing one class of payments from all 254 Texas counties, which represents 40% of all payments (approximately 400,000 per month). Full operation for both payment classes will be accomplished by the beginning of 2001, more than doubling the present volume.

John Knych summarized the Texas CSDU project as follows: "This iteration is very mature, and the movement in speed from the SC35 to the SC60 was seamless. Of the six projects we (IMS and J&B) have done so far, this was the easiest implementation."