Data collection still a problem in needy families program
Agencies face reporting difficulties for state-administered program, HHS official tells lawmakers.
Inconsistent data collection practices at the state level and limits on data that the federal government may request of states make it difficult for the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families program to meet requirements for reporting improper payments, a Health and Human Services Department official told lawmakers at a recent hearing.
HHS faces a challenge in meeting statutory requirements for erroneous payments in the program in part because of state-to-state variations that impede efforts to develop a statistically valid national error rate, Charles Johnson, the department's assistant secretary for budget, technology and finance, told members of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Subcommittee on Federal Financial Management Thursday.
Congressional oversight committees have expressed concern about the tracking of improper payments governmentwide. TANF is one of seven major HHS programs for which the department must provide annual improper-payment estimates based on a combination of susceptibility to erroneous payments and a high total volume of payments made.
Working with states, the department has made progress in reducing improper payments in TANF, Johnson said. But unlike programs such as Medicare, which is consistent across the country, TANF is state-administered, leading to significant variations that require HHS to address improper payments on a state-by-state basis, he said.
Further complicating the issue, states are not required to collect a uniform set of data and there are statutory limitations on what information HHS can request of the states, he testified.
Johnson said the department has run several successful pilot projects aimed at reducing improper payments through methods including the use of data matching on disparate employment-related databases and allowing states access to a national database of new hires. "We think the states and the federal government now have a joint solution," he said, but cautioned that the data matching programs, while a useful incentive for state cooperation on the issue, would not necessarily yield the data required under the 2002 Improper Payments Information Act.
HHS has run into trouble convincing states to spend funds on the statistical sampling that is necessary to meet federal requirements but yields little apparent benefit at the state level, Johnson added. "Getting statistically valid samples is expensive, and states say they don't have the money," he told subcommittee chairman Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla.
An Office of Management and Budget official, who asked not to be named, said Friday that part of the problem is that HHS cannot simply rely on data available from states that report it, because such estimates would not involve random sampling, a key criterion for statistical significance.
"We've just started these matching programs, and they work," Johnson testified. "It just doesn't get us to the statistically valid national error rate. We're having trouble getting this technical rate down."