Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development

  
DWD NOMINATED FOR SMITHSONIAN AWARD
State honored for innovative computer system that manages child support payments

MADISON—The Department of Workforce Development (DWD) today announced it’s innovative way of collecting and disbursing child support payments, has been nominated for an award from the Computerworld Smithsonian Program.

The transition to the state’s centralized receipt and disbursement operation along with a strong partnership with county agencies across Wisconsin has resulted in historic increases in child support collections.  After the first year of operating under the new disbursement system, Wisconsin collected a record high of $870 million in child support in 1999, an increase of over $43.7 million from 1998.

"The centralized receipt and disbursement program has helped Wisconsin remain a leader in child support enforcement and collection," said DWD Secretary Linda Stewart.  "And it represents the most sweeping change in child support collections and disbursements in state history."

The Wisconsin Support Collections Trust Fund, which centralizes all collections and disbursements of child support at a single site is operated under a contract with Lockheed Martin IMS.  Wisconsin’s child support collections are processed at a central location in Milwaukee where all the payments are imaged and processed using specially designed hardware and software.  Today the Trust Fund averages 23,000 disbursements daily and 99% of collections are receipted and disbursed within 48 hours.

The program was established with the goals of increasing child support collections, distributing collections more equitably, and increasing accuracy and efficiency of collection processing and tracking.  The centralized processing of payments provides the level of automation Wisconsin needs to keep pace with the increase in collections and provide regular and timely child support payments to families.

In addition, Centralized Receipt and Disbursement service offers:

• A state of the art Interactive Voice Response (IVR) telephone system, which can be used to 
  check the status of payments or other information.
• Ability for caller to talk to a customer service representative.
• Service in English, Spanish and Hmong languages.
• Employers, who are responsible for providing 70% of Wisconsin’s support collections 
  have the convenience of sending checks to one location or submitting their payments 
  via electronic funds transfer.
• Direct deposit of support payments.
• Option to pay by phone.

"The primary source of material submitted by Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development will enrich the National Museum of American History’s growing collection on the history of information technology, and contribute significantly to the museum’s on-going efforts to chronicle the Information Age," said Spencer R. Crew, Director of the National Museum of American History founded in1846.

A commemorative medal will be presented on Monday, April 3, at an annual recognition ceremony in Washington D.C., when DWD’s program will become part of the Permanent Research Collection on Information Technology at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History.

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