Case Study: State of California, Department of Child Support Services (DCSS)

State of California, Department of Child Support Services (DCSS), Administrative Services Division (ASD), Accounting Services Branch (ASB).

Financial Branch Business Process Assessment.

With the introduction of the Federal Family Support Act of 1988 (FSA 88) and the subsequent Federal Personal Responsibility & Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) of 1996, the Federal mandate for statewide Child Support program administration has been one of California’s most important initiatives.  The California State Legislature secured this mandate into law with Assembly Bill 150, transferring authority for administration of the State’s Child Support program from the 58 local child support agencies (LCSA) to one centralized agency under the direction of the Department of Child Support Services (DCSS).

The Accounting Services Branch (ASB) within the DCSS requested the need to critically analyze its inherited financial business processes in order to develop a statewide approach to effectively administer the workload required to support the State of California Child Support financial processing need. 

PCG Technology Consulting (PCG TC, formerly Eclipse Solutions, Inc.) responded and won the effort to perform a Financial Branch Business Process Assessment (BPA) to assist the DCSS ASB in transitioning to California Child Support Automation System (CCSAS), standardizing program and financial management, as well as producing all required Federal and State reporting information.

To fulfill the BPA effort, the PCG TC team approached the project by focusing on a five phase discipline, intended to guide the client through a structured assessment process. This proven approach and the PCG TC team’s ability to communicate recommendations for improved efficiencies, enhanced automation support, and operational improvements complimented the effort.  The discipline included:

• Project Planning – Project initiation, planning, stakeholder definition and involvement;
• Information Collection and Analysis – ‘As-Is’ process analysis and problem identification;
• Process Transformation – ‘To-Be’ process design and future visioning;
• Action Implementation – Transition and implementation strategy;
• Continuous Process Improvement – Skill building and knowledge transfer.

Each phase incorporated the success of the previous phase and led to the establishment of a continuous process improvement framework for the Financial Accounting Services Branch (ASB) of DCSS.  The PCG TC team included direct involvement with not only the main Child Support Enforcement (CSE) system component of CCSAS, but also first hand knowledge of the legacy systems (ARS and CASES), and LCSA Operations.  The approach, along with the experience and familiarity of the PCG TC team with the CCSAS environment, ensured a successful outcome for this initiative. 

The 19-month assessment was successfully completed and resulted in a number of benefits, key findings, and recommendations.

Among the key benefits:

• As ASB had minimal documentation, the effort identified and fully documented 140 key processes being performed within a 4 Unit Branch of approximately 35 Full Time Employees (FTEs).
• ASB was experiencing a full financial audit (internal department and external Franchise Tax Board), the documentation was utilized on an ongoing basis and proved beneficial within audit result discussions/findings.
• ASB has experienced significant staff turnover. The process documentation has been utilized as standard training documentation for new and/or transitioned staff.