Sherry Allison does a nice job of summing it up in her story which ran in the May 31 issue of the Denver Post, entitled "Glitch drains aid to needy". I'll just quote from it, although I'm inclined to call a system that has not worked since it was installed almost five years ago something more than a glitch.
"For five years, CBMS — a database that processes applications for help, including Medicaid, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and food stamps — has been problematic.
"At first, the system chucked some applicants out while overpaying others. State officials remedied that but had to reimburse the federal government more than $9 million in December for the mistakes.
"Counties also complained that CBMS is nonintuitive, that it takes 45 minutes to enter data for one application and that, when moving from one screen to the other, things like names and addresses have to be re-entered.
"Then the recession spawned a demand for help that state and county officials have never seen before. Applications became backlogged in the metro area and Colorado Springs. Advocacy groups warned that people were going hungry. Food pantries were inundated.
"Last year, Colorado ranked 52nd in the nation and its territories — just above Guam — for food-stamp application timeliness, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In some counties — including Jefferson, Denver and Adams — between 20 percent and 40 percent of applicants waited longer than 30 days to get a food-stamp card this spring".
Ms. Allison has another story in the June 6 issue of the Denver Post entitled "State seeks foundations' aid" in which she discusses a meeting State officials held with a group of Denver Foundations which are bearing additional burdens in meeting the needs of the poor while they wait for CBMS to do what it is supposed to do. Here's one quote: "They (i.e. the foundations) say they're responding to a dramatic increase in need around the city: People are showing up at churches, shelters and senior centers hungry and desperate".
Not to worry, everything will be fine in 12 to 18 months. As you saw in the previous post, the State is taking a thoughtful approach to solving the problem.
Hi Don,
Remember me? The technology column guy who offered a few years ago to write prototype software to handle Colorado welfare benefits calculations as a demonstration of what could be done? Just checked the Internet and saw the stuff from May and June about CBMS. The offer is still open and I've conveyed it to several people who have written about CBMS but no takers yet. If I understand the latest "fix" proposal correctly, Deloitte wants to create a Web hook into the CBMS software/database. I.e., now the information will come in via the Internet before CBMS screws it up. Right? Has it occurred to anyone that just having people send in data via the Internet doesn't fix the problems in the CBMS software? Oh well. Another expensive layer of boondoggle.
Posted by: Richard Power, Technology Columnist & Software Designer | September 07, 2009 at 12:47 PM