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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, September 8, 2015
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CONTACT: Sarah Breen
[email protected] | (202) 219-1351
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GSA OIG Issues New Report on GSA’s Management of the Army Childcare Subsidy Program
The U.S. General Services Administration (GSA) Office of Inspector General (OIG) issued a report today concluding that GSA’s administration of an expanded Army childcare subsidy program has resulted in mounting backlogs of unprocessed subsidy requests, unanswered emails, unpaid invoices, and unreturned phone calls, to the detriment of Army families. The OIG’s evaluation began earlier this year after GSA’s current Administrator reported serious concerns about the program to the OIG.
Background
The Army’s childcare subsidy program helps Army families pay for off-post childcare when on-post childcare is unavailable. Beginning in 2003, GSA administered the subsidy program for approximately 200 Army families whose children were enrolled exclusively in federal childcare centers. In April 2014, GSA agreed to expand its administration of the Army program to include Army families enrolled in private childcare centers as well. This added over 9,000 families and 5,000 childcare providers to the program.
GSA administers the program based on Army requirements. Army families must fill out an application and provide documents including federal tax returns, active duty orders, pay statements, school schedules, and a certification that on-post childcare is not available. Childcare providers must also submit an application and supporting documents regarding licensing, inspection, accreditation, and childcare rates. Childcare providers email invoices to GSA on a monthly basis for each child enrolled. While a family awaits approval of their subsidy application, they must pay all childcare costs up front.
The OIG’s Findings
The OIG found that from the beginning of GSA’s administration of the expanded program in August 2014 through the end of July 2015, the program experienced continually increasing backlogs of unprocessed subsidy requests, unanswered emails, unpaid invoices, and unreturned phone calls.
The OIG found that the primary cause of the increasing backlogs was GSA’s failure to plan and prepare adequately for the expansion. GSA officials were on notice well before implementation of the expanded program that it would add over 9,000 families to the program and that GSA’s existing processes and personnel could not support such growth. Nevertheless, GSA failed to streamline processes and scale up staffing levels in advance of the expansion. At implementation of the expanded program, staffing levels were far too low, staff lacked appropriate privacy training and security screening, and the information technology systems used to support the program were inadequate and incompatible.
Program personnel were soon overwhelmed by the massive increase in workload, and the backlogs began to mount. At the time of the expansion, program staff used email to manage incoming applications and provider information, a digital document repository to house required documents, and spreadsheets to process invoice payments. None of these systems interfaced with each other. GSA staff manually extracted applications, supporting documents, and invoices from the email system and entered them into the document repository for processing, which caused significant delays. The invoice payment process was similarly manual and complicated, and a spreadsheet used by program managers to track the backlog was inaccurate. The storage capacity of GSA’s email and voicemail systems were inadequate to support the expanded program. GSA program managers periodically deleted emails and voicemails from the systems and decided not to respond to over 4,000 voicemails.
The OIG also reported that GSA’s efforts to gain control of the backlogs have included hiring additional personnel, changing its case management process, adding software applications, and providing additional information about the application process on its website, with additional funding from the Army. Despite these efforts, by the end of July, the backlog had grown to nearly 26,000 unprocessed childcare subsidy actions, unpaid invoices, unanswered emails, and unreturned phone messages.
As a result of the planning and process failures outlined in the OIG’s report, Army families enrolled in the program have experienced inadequate customer service. Phone calls went unanswered, voice messages and emails were ignored and deleted, and subsidy application approvals were substantially delayed. Many families have reported severe financial hardships resulting from the processing delays.
In addition, as the GSA OIG reported in April this year, GSA contractors hired to assist with backlogged items were given access to Army families’ sensitive and personally identifying information before completing required background investigations. The sensitive information included social security numbers, dates of birth, home addresses, home phone numbers, and bank routing information, among other items. Moreover, subsequent to GSA’s submission of a corrective plan to address this security breach, yet another security breach occurred. The OIG report released today states that after GSA implemented a new information technology system, GSA’s failure to set appropriate access controls allowed unauthorized users access to childcare subsidy information in the system. GSA has since restricted access controls in that system.
“Army families are suffering because of GSA’s planning and process failures,” said GSA Inspector General Carol F. Ochoa. “GSA’s efforts to gain control of this program have so far failed, as backlogs continue to mount.”
The Army childcare subsidy program was included as a part of GSA’s Financial Management Line of Business transfer to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) approved by the Office of Management and Budget last November. As of July 31, the planned transfer of the program to the USDA had been placed on hold.
