2011 NASCIO Recognition Award Nomination New Jersey Department of Human Services and New Jersey Office of Information Technology DOVE Departmental Online Verification Engine Category: Enterprise IT Management Initiatives State of New Jersey Page 1 of 6
B. Executive Summary The NJ Office of Information Technology (OIT) developed the Departmental Online Verification Engine (DOVE) for the NJ Department of Human Services to streamline the verification process required for enrollment into the NJ FamilyCare (NJFC) health insurance program. The NJ FamilyCare program requires state and county workers to verify the identity, income, citizenship status, and level of state and federal benefits that could be provided to a program applicant. This information resides in multiple computer systems maintained by the NJ Department of Labor, NJ Department of Human Services, and the US Social Security Administration. During the deep economic recession, the number of New Jersey citizens who needed human service benefits such as NJFC, Food Stamps, and TANF (Temporary Aid to Needy Families) was increasing rapidly. Some county agencies had lines that went out their doors. The Governor requested multiple initiatives to reduce the time to process benefit applications. One priority was to reduce the time it takes for county workers to determine if a person or family is eligible for NJFC. DOVE was implemented to efficiently access, query, retrieve, and compile information from multiple, disconnected computer systems, and present it in an easily comprehensible and manipulated form to agency workers, who were tasked with processing benefit applications and rendering an eligibility determination for NJ FamilyCare health insurance. This project provided a single interface to the nine systems and twenty-one screens of data previously used for verification. It also produced a detailed report for the eligibility unit, replacing inches of paper previously produced from the mainframe screen prints. Case workers time to retrieve the typical information required for eligibility determination has been reduced from one to two hours down to minutes. This project required cooperation and priority setting from multiple state agencies and IT groups, and New Jersey had a nine-month window for the project lifecycle. The solution had to meet the needs of 21 independent county offices as well as private vendors that process applications for benefits for the state. It was also the priority of the State CIO and DHS IT organization to solve this problem quickly but in a manner that was extensible and re-usable. DOVE went into production for three counties in January 2010 and was deployed to the remaining counties over the course of 2010. Page 2 of 6
C. Description of Business Problem and Solution On behalf of the Department of Human Services (DHS), county welfare agencies and private vendors ( case workers ) receive applications for NJ FamilyCare health insurance benefits from families throughout the State. Applicants provide identity and income information about each member of their household. In the past, case workers then searched computer systems to determine citizenship (birth records obtained from the Bureau of Vital Statistics) and existing State provided benefits. If DHS benefits were then being provided to any household member, those existing cases were related to the application just received. The workers the searched and compiled screen shots of all matches found. The case workers accessed computer systems maintained by the Department of Labor to determine the Unemployment and Disability Insurance benefits, family leave income, and wages earned for each household member. Authorized workers also accessed a Social Security Administration application to verify and document the federal benefits being received. The screen prints were then assembled into a case file for the purpose of determining eligibility. These various systems required independent logons, searches, and screen prints to complete the case file. Not all case workers had privileges to logon to, search, and print from all of the systems required to produce the case file. Backlogs were growing as incomplete case files sat waiting for workers to complete the verification process. Volumes of paper were used to screen print every mainframe screen, wasting paper, toner, and creating huge case files that required review by an Eligibility Unit. Eligibility workers had to sift through these mounds of paper to correctly determine eligibility for the various programs offered by New Jersey. The verification process required data from four Labor systems, four DHS systems, and one federal system for a minimum of 21 screens worth of information for each person on an application. If any one applicant had multiple claims in any system, all additional claims and associated screens had to be searched and printed. All information needed to be printed and stored in a case file for examination by an Eligibility staff person. Solution Decisions Two options were considered to develop the new Departmental Online Verification Engine (DOVE) application within the 9-month timeframe: write one program to deliver all functionality, or build the solution with reusable components using an Enterprise Service Bus layer. Option One: This first option would involve writing one computer program to authenticate the user, collect and edit the applicant information, determine the systems to be searched, Page 3 of 6
communicate to one or more of the nine source systems, extract the necessary data elements from each system, translate and format the source system data, deliver that data back to the application, assemble the returned information into a summary and detailed format, present that information back to the user, and finally provide record selection and discard functionality for inclusion into the printed report. Option Two: It was obvious that one program could not be built in the desired narrow timeframe of nine months, and that a component-based solution must be architected; this precluded Option One. Since the State had an investment in IBM s Message Broker technology, this technology was explored and determined to be a good fit for this application. The decision was made to expand the existing Message Broker infrastructure and build the DOVE solution using Option Two as follows: 1. User Interface [UI] and Data Entry: Authenticate users via a web service call to the DHS Active Directory. Once authenticated, present a data entry screen to collect and edit the applicant information. Provide options for the systems to be searched and submit the request to the Broker. 2. Broker: Receive one request from the UI; parse that request into multiple messages for the back-end systems; wait for reply and handle timeouts; translate/transform returned data into user-friendly formats; assemble transformed data into one message; and return one message to the user interface. 3. Legacy System Extracts: Legacy system programmers were assigned to extract the data elements from each source system or to compose user-interface messages when information was not found or when the system was unavailable for Broker use. 4. User Interface and Presentation: Once the message was returned to the UI, the data was formatted as a summary page and detailed page. The summary page listed each application with a link to the detail for each match found in that system. The user could browse the detail and decide to keep or discard that information for inclusion into the detailed report. The detailed report included all information not discarded and was formatted in an easy-to-read layout. The summary and detailed reports were printed as the complete case file for the Eligibility Unit. 5. Communications: Broker queues and request listeners had to be enabled in the mainframe environments to allow the mainframe to acknowledge and respond to Broker requests. 6. Infrastructure: The existing infrastructure was expanded, creating an additional test and production environment for this project. In-house technicians were trained on this upgraded product and its maintenance requirements. 7. Quality Control: The user interface had to produce the same results as the legacy mainframe systems. This exercise lead to exhaustive loops of requesting screen shots from the source systems (enough to hit upon every condition with associated data elements), and examining output from the Message Broker and outputs from the User Interface when the results were not the same. The differences were highlighted and returned to the Broker or legacy programmers for correction. 8. Training: User training materials were developed to demonstrate the requirements for user authentication as well as the user interface functionality. The manuals Page 4 of 6
highlighted the legacy system screen shots and showed which fields were included in the new interface. All pilot users were trained and Train-the-Trainer classes were conducted. 9. Pilot Users: Users from three pilot counties, State Eligibility Staff, and one private vendor participated in the design and development of this system. They were instrumental in comparing legacy-produced case files to DOVE-produced case files, and declared the production readiness of this solution. 10. Policies and Data Agreements: The streamlined user provisioning process was agreed to by the data custodians and DHS to ensure this highly sensitive information was granted to the fewest public and private employees, and that auditing of transactions was sufficient to detect abuse. 11. Monitoring: All components required for a round-trip transaction, excluding the mainframes, are monitored for availability. The OIT and DHS Help Desks are notified of outages, causes, and estimated duration of the outage. Call chains are in place to notify the counties and private vendors during normal business hours. 12. Auditing: All user requests are logged on the Broker with the user information, search criteria and date/time of request. No private information retrieved from the legacy systems is logged. The project officially kicked off in March 2009 with weekly user requirement sessions with representative county agencies. Development began in August 2009 and testing started in November 2009. DOVE went into production for three counties in January 2010 and deployed to the remaining 18 counties over the course of 2010. D. Significance of the Project This project greatly improved the workflow for county case workers. Verifying applicant information was simplified for the eligibility workers due to the fact that multiple systems could be accessed with one login. This application streamlined the user provisioning process; reduced the number of logins assigned, screens accessed and printed for the verification process; and streamlined the case file for the eligibility determination process. Case workers time to retrieve the typical information required for eligibility determination has been reduced from one to two hours down to minutes. There are hundreds of these inquiries performed in each of over 50 offices across the State on a daily basis. The lives of New Jersey citizens are also improved by reducing the time they had to wait before a decision could be rendered about their eligibility and by quickening their time to be covered by insurance. The project was a successful piece in the Governor s initiative to reduce the number of citizens waiting for benefits and the time it takes to process these benefits. The project was aligned with the State s IT strategic plan of incorporating web services on a platform that is shared by multiple State agencies. The underlying architecture and the web service code can be re-used for multiple other initiatives. Page 5 of 6
For example, the DOVE project is the basis for the large scale Consolidated Access Support System (CASS) project that NJ is implementing. The DOVE user access functionality will be incorporated into CASS; however, the data retrieval services built on the ESB will be used to provide data to CASS. The architecture helps to eliminate point-to-point interfaces and instead provide reusable services for CASS and other systems. E. Benefit of the Project The DOVE project benefits the citizens of New Jersey who require social services as well as the DHS workers who must provide these services. The main benefit to clients and staff is the reduced time to determine eligibility. There are hundreds of these inquiries performed in each of over 50 offices across the State on a daily basis. (Again, case workers time to retrieve the typical information required for eligibility determination has been reduced from one to two hours down to minutes.) Additionally, the architecture provides the framework to benefit the implementation of other projects that require similar data. This will reduce the cost and schedule of new projects. The Office of Information Technology staff are also excited to be implementing new technologies. This project supports several of the NASCIO State CIO Priorities, including Nos. 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 9, and 10. The implementation of this architecture has already been reused. OIT was able to implement a second system that needed to verify income information for a new federal program to determine eligibility of unemployed/underemployed residents applying for home mortgage assistance. That application was built in two months and is already in production for 20 users. The income retrieval web service is also used to support eligibility determination for requests by families for catastrophic illness insurance. The web service (ESB) architecture will be used to support New Jersey s Health Information Technology initiative. A Master Client Index (MCI) is being deployed to support the access and exchange of health information. Services to add, delete, and update records will be built on the ESB as the gateway to the MCI. Record locator, record retrieval, access control, and auditing services will also be supported. This project allowed the State of NJ to become more responsive to its citizens by reducing the time that they had to wait to receive benefits. By saving state and county workers time, reducing the administration of user logins and passwords, and reducing the amount of paper to store benefit information, the project avoids costs. Reusing the technology to support similar data needs reduces IT development time on similar projects. Page 6 of 6