The Virginia Department of Social Services (DSS), Division of Child Support Enforcement (DCSE), is responsible for administering the child support program, collecting more than $650 million in child support annually to serve nearly 280,000 cases and 350,000 children across the Commonwealth. DCSE’s legacy system, the Automated Program to Enforce Child Support (APECS), is nearly 30 years old, the second oldest in the country. This system interfaces with TANF, SNAP, Child Welfare, and Medicaid systems to accept referrals, complete intake, and conduct case management. With the full support of agency leadership, DSS launched the Child Support System Modernization Project to implement a modern, cloud-hosted system and create process efficiencies.
Strategy by CSG SM
DSS engaged CSG to provide strategy and planning services to ensure a comprehensive plan for the implementation of their modernized child support system. Together, the CSG and DSS teams completed and received OCSS approval for one of the first streamlined feasibility studies, submitted the PAPD and IAPD to OCSS, and developed the RFP for the system implementation vendor in just over seven months. Our team prepared DSS for the next phase of the project by providing readiness activities such as Organizational Change Management, project management planning, identification and consolidation of forms and reports, stakeholder engagement including interface planning, and data clean-up.
