IT's Fatal Amnesia

If Guinness World Records gave out an award for prolonged futility in successfully developing a US state government IT system, then South Carolina’s Department of Social Services would surely be a contender for the “honor,” in recognition of its protracted attempt to create an automated child-support enforcement system (CSES). The system, which is intended to aid courtordered child-support collections, was part of a federal government mandate under the Family Support Act of 1988. Originally, all states were required to have a federally certi ed CSES in place by 1 October 1995; however, when only Montana met the deadline, Congress extended it to 1 October 1997 without imposing a nancial penalty.1 Currently, South Carolina’s CSES is scheduled to become fully operational by 1 October 2019—assuming nothing else untoward happens.2 The state’s lengthy, tortuous path to creating a CSES began in early 1992,3 and it’s been downhill ever since. The rst attempt, which missed both the October 1995 and 1997 deadlines, ended in a bitter lawsuit between South Carolina and its CSES developer, Unisys Corporation, which wasn’t resolved until late 2001. That e ort cost $34.7 million. The next attempt began in 2008, but it too ended in a rancorous lawsuit between the state and its system developer, the Hewlett-Packard Company, which was nally settled in early 2015. This second e ort cost $108 million. South Carolina’s latest CSES implementation attempt, this time involving the Xerox Corporation, is expected to cost $140 million when (or if) it goes operational as planned in October 2019. The total projected cost of South Carolina’s CSES will thus exceed $280 million (with US taxpayers on the hook for $218 million of that amount under federal–state cost-sharing agreements).4 Furthermore, the state faces a cumulative federal ne for missing the October 2007 deadline extension that’s estimated to reach $200 million (with $61 million of that paid by the previous two CSES vendors as part of the lawsuit settlements).5 On top of this staggering measurable cost for failing to develop a working CSES are the immeasurable yet very painful personal and nancial burdens felt by the untold number of families in the state who over the past two decades didn’t receive their court-ordered child-support payments because of the absent system.6 Consider also the opportunity costs incurred by both South Carolina and US taxpayers who’ve been paying for the repeated, expensive foul-ups. The only true bene ciaries seem to be the system developers who didn’t deliver. IT’s Fatal Amnesia