FSSA outsourcing plan to get more review

MIKE SMITH
Associated Press

INDIANAPOLIS - Gov. Mitch Daniels has given a review team more time to consider plans by the state's social services agency to outsource the application process for food stamps and other welfare benefits, his office announced Friday.

The Family and Social Services Administration has been considering plans to award a contract to a private vendor to handle the application process for food stamps, Medicaid and other government safety-net programs. Two groups of companies have participated in the bidding for the contract, estimated to be worth about $1 billion over 10 years.

FSSA had previously been looking at a timetable of completing negotiations with a winning vendor later this month.

Daniels appointed an interagency team in mid-May to review the welfare delivery system and the two responses that FSSA received to its request for proposals to privatize the application process. The governor originally asked the group to conclude its review by mid-June, but now has given it more time.

Daniels spokeswoman Jane Jankowski said there was no specific timetable for completing the review, but said the administration was "looking at weeks, not months."

FSSA's plan to outsource the intake processes for programs benefiting about 1 million children, seniors, disabled and low-income Hoosiers has been under scrutiny because of problems that Texas and other states have run into privatizing similar programs.

FSSA Secretary Mitch Roob has said his agency should outsource the application process because it does it now in haphazard, inefficient and ineffective ways that do not serve the interests of welfare recipients.

Earl Goode, Daniels' deputy chief of staff and chairman of the interagency review team, said it has analyzed enough information to agree that Indiana must modernize its welfare system and that broad solutions proposed by FSSA were sound. But he said the team has not yet concluded how to accomplish that.

Goode said the team has identified some questions and tactical issues it wants to examine further before it makes a recommendation to Daniels about a specific agreement with a vendor to handle the eligibility process. He said the team would continue its efforts until it has either negotiated a proposed agreement for Daniels' review or prepared an alternative recommendation.

The two teams of vendors, one led by IBM and the other by Bermuda-based Accenture LLP, were to have submitted their final responses to FSSA by May 9. The IBM team includes Affiliated Computer Services Inc. of Dallas, which employed Roob as a vice president before he joined the Daniels administration last year.

(Hey! Don't we know them?! - Blogger)

The union that represents at least 5,000 FSSA workers, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees-Council 62, has criticized the privatization plan, saying similar contracts have led to problems in Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Kansas, Texas, Wisconsin and Wyoming. (You forgot about Mississippi)

The union still represents the workers even though Daniels canceled state collective bargaining contracts when he took office last year.

AFSCME spokesman David Patterson said the union, when it had bargaining authority for the state workers, had proposed modernizing the agency many times but doing it with state employees.

"We're glad the governor has finally realized that this rush to privatize the system was ill-conceived, but the fact remains that more time (for review) will not change the fact that privatization hasn't worked elsewhere," he said.