The governor’s press conference went on a junket today. Reporters and administration officials gathered in the state’s old women’s prison – the Dale facility in the Waterbury state office complex — to tour the Department of Children and Families’ new Benefits Service Center.
The Center is part of the Economic Services Division, which provides a wide array of services, including ReachUp (formerly Temporary Aid to Needy Families), 3SquaresVT (Food Stamps), Medicaid, prescription assistance, fuel assistance and Dr. Dynasaur (a health insurance program for children). More than 180,000 Vermonters rely on programs provided by the division, and many are among the state’s poorest and least well-educated.
Until recently, families filed applications for services with state workers at a dozen district offices; from now on they will go through one centralized intake system, accessible only by telephone, the Internet and paper application.
Gov. Jim Douglas hailed the Center as “the best possible way to reach Vermonters” and a precursor to the Challenges for Change government restructuring program that the state is in the middle of creating. He said centralized services are critical at a time when the need for services is going up (Medicaid demand alone is expected to rise by 2 percent this year).
“This is the kind of transformative change that can really make a difference,” Douglas said. “It’s imperative to demonstrate to the Legislature how effective this kind of change can be.”
The governor said when he first took office eight years ago, Vermont ranked at the bottom of a national survey on electronic-government. The state is now almost in the middle of the e-government pack, he said.
The Benefit Service Center is expected to save $2 million a year in labor costs.
The new application system took two years and cost $2.8 million to implement (all of it paid for with federal dollars). The Benefit Service Center is expected to save $2 million a year in labor costs. The savings, however, have already been booked by the Douglas administration and won’t count toward the state’s quest to restructure government.
The Challenges law, passed on Feb. 25, removed $38 million in restructuring savings for fiscal year 2011; of that total, the Agency of Human Services is expected to come up with $17 million.
Tom Evslin, the state’s chief technology officer, said the Center should be a template for the reorganization efforts. “We can move quickly to replicate it in other parts of state government,” Evslin said.
When the Center was formed, 30 positions were cut (about 10 percent of the division), though there were very few dislocated workers because the department had two years to plan for the project, according to Rob Hofmann, secretary of the Agency of Human Services.
“We can move quickly to replicate it in other parts of state government,” Evslin said.
State workers will no longer be available at district offices to assist families in person with the application process. Instead, the local offices will become part of the intake system and workers on staff will provide over-the-phone advice to clients statewide regarding health care, long-term care, financial assistance and specialized eligibility programs.
Steve Dale, commissioner of the Department of Children and Families, said in an interview that applicants can go to local community action councils for help.
“This isn’t a call center in Topeka or Bangalore,” Hofmann said. “This is Vermonters serving Vermonters. We have some offices that are so small that if a few people happen to be on a call or out sick, the wait times can be extraordinary.”
The core operations for the Benefits Service Center, which consist of an application and document processing office, a call center and a web-based center, are located in three different offices in the state office complex.
About two-thirds of the state district offices have already shifted their application systems to the Center, and the remaining third are expected to be incorporated into the system by June 1. The Web site, myBenefits.vt.gov, is already available.
In the Dale building, about half a dozen women sat around a large table sorting through mail and other paperwork. They put together applications, handwritten letters and other documents in piles of 75 or so sheets and handed them off to another worker who scanned them into a computer in less than a minute. Each document was automatically assigned a bar code and queued up in a software application for workers who process the digital eligibility forms.
The call center, which is located in a separate office space some distance away, takes queries from Vermonters who need services. According to Paul Madden, who is in charge of the call center, 15 “benefits” agents take about 850 calls a day. The maximum wait time is 5 minutes; the average is 2 minutes, he said. There is also an automated call center available 24/7 for callers who want to get general information, request application forms or set up accounts to get information about their cases.
The third leg of the Benefit Service Center – the Web site – already has 9,700 users. Data from the site is automatically entered into the division’s eligibility database.
Reporters asked whether the state had statistical information about the number of Vermonters who have access to computers. Dale said his department hadn’t collected data regarding the percentage of residents who are online. Evslin estimated 65 percent of the state has high speed Internet access and 85 percent could have access to broadband. Evslin said Vermonters without home computers could file online applications at the library or work.
Hofmann said the department would still take paper applications.
For more information, call 1-800-479-6151, or go to myBenefits.vt.gov.
Marcia Guyette and Les Birnbaum explain how the document processing system works
Paul Madden says his staff of 17 takes 850 calls a day from Vermonters seeking financial support services.
Steve Dale, Jim Douglas, Rob Hofmann, Tom Evslin talk about the savings through the Benefits Service Center
