$4Kids
Business Case
In 1975, Congress established the Child Support Enforcement Program with the enactment of Title IV-D of the federal Social Security Act. Under this law, each State would be required to house a unit, whose sole purpose would be to collect and disburse child support payments.
Due to downward trends in the country’s economy and an increase in established child support orders, employers and obligators are adopting alternate means to paying child support at minimum costs. The Virginia Department of Social Services (DSS) currently disburses 53 percent of all child support payments electronically through direct deposit. A previous version of the $4KIDS service had been online for several years. The application had a number of challenges that included an outdated design, high maintenance costs and long turnaround time for system enhancements.Solution
DSS partnered with Virginia Interactive to create the new electronic child support payment service, $4KIDS. The secure web based service and interactive voice response (IVR) system enables employers, non-custodial parents (NCP) and individuals paying on behalf of NCPs to remit ACH child support payments.
Virginia is believed to be the first state in the nation to institute several cutting edge system features including:
- Ability to pay online or via IVR
- Improved data accuracy and integrity
- Increased security for sensitive data
- Email confirmation of payment
- Integrated dynamic reporting
- Ability pay via mobile phone
Tools
- Visual Studio 2008 C# .Net
- Microsoft SQL Server 2008
- Microsoft Visio 2007
- Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Browser Security Encryption
Results
- Developed, tested and launched in 3 months with no interruption of service
- 2,900 total active users registered in 1st month (Year to date 23,000 active users)
- 1,600 payments processed in 1st week totaling $320,000
- Year to date: Over 168,000 transactions totaling over $32 million