A legislative audit of the Office of Recovery Services - the second audit in as many weeks to find fault with the division - raises questions about the cost-benefit ratios of current funding practices. It also speculates about a mammoth computer system that has taken much longer and cost significantly more than expected to get online.
The Office of the Legislative Fiscal Analyst released its in-depth budget review of Recovery Services during the Legislative Process Committee meeting Monday. Just two weeks ago, the legislative auditor general released a performance audit critical of the office.The Office of Recovery Services is the state agency charged with collecting unpaid child support, as well as recouping money paid out inappropriately by the state as benefits like welfare and medical assistance. It is unique in state government because it supports itself with collections. For instance, the state can keep child support when Aid to Families with Dependent Children has supported the family that was owed support.
The budget review recommends the state bring the office back in line with other divisions by allocating the state's share of its operating budget through the general fund. The analysts hope the state will put the collections into the general fund and then appropriate it back to Recovery Services to allow more legislative oversight of the agency.
The audit also criticized Recovery Services for increasing the layer of management rather than hiring more line workers to boost collections. A lack of readily available data and a "comprehensive division strategic plan, a business plan or a staffing plan" were also cited.
And while the review found that "in a general sense," Recovery Services meets its mission and statutory requirements, the analyst believes the cost-benefit ratio of collections "has decreased in recent years and may even be overstated because of a lack of information regarding revenues and costs."The auditor's office is not alone in asking questions about the Office of Recovery Services Information System (ORSIS), a huge and complex computer system that is 30 months overdue. When it was presented to and approved by the 1989 Legislature, ORSIS was supposed to take two years to install and cost $2.5 million, with the federal government picking up 90 percent of the tab.
According to auditors, when the contract with IBM was signed in April 1990, cost was supposed to be $10.5 million and completion was scheduled for April 1992. The project, which is now expected online next September, may cost up to $22 million.
It will be worth the money, according to Emma Chacon, Recovery Services director who was named to the post partway through the ORSIS project.
ORSIS is designed to track child support orders in Utah, manage collections and payments through a payroll deduction system and tie into other programs like drivers' records to locate scofflaw parents. It is also supposed to help collection staff manage caseloads.
But several Recovery Services employees have spoken with the Deseret News recently about their concerns regarding ORSIS. Citing fear of re-tali-a-tion, they asked that their names not be used. But the workers, from several Recovery Services offices around the state, say the system will be outdated by the time it comes online.
The audit touched on the same concerns: "It is hoped that the ORSIS system will improve efficiency in the Office. However, there is currently no evidence that it will enhance efforts."
"ORSIS is a joke," one of the ORS employees said. "They are trying to create a program that will put us to bed, feed us and burp us - if it decides to come to the party at all."
Chacon said IBM ran into problems developing the project and had to straighten it out. Programs have been modified to meet new federal guidelines, which were finalized in August 1993. Utah changed its state finance system, then cost went up because the contract was for a system to work with the old finance system. Code also had to be changed to reflect statutory changes.
If employees understood ORSIS better, Chacon said, the wouldn't assume the systems will be outdated before it's ever fired up.
Sen. Lane Beattie, R-Bountiful, reacted strongly to the audit. "I don't know who is in charge over there (at ORS). We can't micromanage state government. We're a part-time legislative body. I don't buy it that your people are overburdened," he told Chacon.
"State government is going to have to learn to do a lot more with a lot less."