The child support enforcement (CSE) program is a joint federal and state partnership mandated in 1975 under Title IV-D of the Social Security Actthrough which noncustodial parents are located, paternity is established, and child support orders are issued and enforced. State CSE programs are responsible for carrying out these basic activities. These activities may take place through judicial action or an expedited administrative process, depending on the state where the action takes place. In a judicial process, the courts have the authority to make certain decisions and take certain actions, and proceedings take place in a legal setting, typically involving district, state, or county attorneys, judges, and other parties. By contrast, in an expedited administrative process, the state CSE program has the authority to administer certain aspects of state child support law or regulation without court approval being required for legally binding actions. Although the states administer the child support enforcement program, the federal government plays a major role. This includes funding most of the program and requiring states to develop certain policies and procedures to help locate noncustodial parents and enforce child support orders. The Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE), in conjunction with regional HHS offices, is responsible for overseeing and monitoring state CSE programs’ compliance with federal requirements. The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) of 1996 amended portions of the Social Security Act, including some provisions that pertained to child support enforcement. One such provision mandates that states enact laws requiring state agencies to collect SSNs for child support enforcement purposes. Under PRWORA, SSNs are to be recorded when individuals apply for certain licenses such as commercial driver’s licenses, occupational and professional licenses, and marriage licenses. This provision also mandates placing SSNs in records related to divorce decrees, death certificates, child support orders, and paternity establishments. The Balanced Budget Act of 1997 expanded this requirement to include the collection of SSNs from applicants for all driver’s licenses—commercial and noncommercial—and also made it effective for applicants of recreational licenses. Additionally, the Balanced Budget Act initially made the effective date of this provision retroactive to October 1996, as if it had been included in PRWORA. In 1998, however, the effective date of this provision was extended to October 1, 2000. This provision only required that SSNs be collected, not that they be displayed on driver’s licenses. A second provision of PRWORA requires that states enact laws requiring procedures to suspend licenses of noncustodial parents who owe past-due child support. Licenses subject to suspension include commercial and noncommercial driver’s licenses, and occupational and professional licenses. Additionally, as part of their CSE plans, states are required to provide OCSE with information on how they will implement the procedures prescribed in their laws. CSE programs use SSNs to help locate noncustodial parents and enforce support orders. SSNs are important in these endeavors because, by virtue of being unique numbers, they help ensure that the correct person has been identified as the noncustodial parent. This accurate identification is essential in situations in which databases contain several individuals with the same or similar names and birthdates. When SSN data are not available, child support officials said that it is more likely that the wrong person will be identified as the noncustodial parent. Efforts to confirm identity by other means can be labor-intensive and time-consuming. When SSNs are available, child support programs use them as one component in their efforts to identify the whereabouts, income and assets of noncustodial parents by matching them against those in state and federal databases. For example, child support programs use these matches to obtain address information to locate noncustodial parents, to obtain employment information to enforce support orders, and to identify the driver’s licenses of noncustodial parents who are candidates for license suspension. Although CSE programs obtain SSNs from a variety of sources, including MVAs, CSE programs themselves are not generally a source of SSNs for other agencies. Generally, CSE programs may disclose SSNs only to other CSE programs or social service agencies. While MVAs’ use of SSNs varies, some MVAs accept a valid Social Security card as one form of identification to issue a driver’s license. MVAs also use SSNs to control fraudulent driver’s license applications, for internal administrative purposes, or to track fines or fees. For these reasons 35 of the MVAs collected SSNs from all drivers before being required to do so by the federal government. Most MVAs (47 out of 53) collect SSNs from all applicants for driver’s licenses, but OCSE has taken limited or no steps to promote such collection in states not currently doing so. Almost two-thirds of the MVAs collecting SSNs collected them from all driver’s license applicants prior to the passage of the Social Security Act’s requirement to do so. Of the 6 states that are not collecting SSNs from all applicants for driver’s licenses, the legislatures in 5 (Georgia, Kansas, Maryland, Minnesota, and Oregon) have not introduced laws requiring collection of SSNs in this manner, and, although the remaining state (Michigan) has passed such a law, the MVA has not implemented it. OCSE did not take any action against 1 state (Michigan) because of a lawsuit, did not take formal action against 2 states (Georgia, and Minnesota), and did not know that 3 states were not collecting SSNs from all applicants for driver’s licenses. Table 1 shows that almost two-thirds of the MVAs were collecting SSNs from all driver’s license applicants before the date of the legislation requiring this practice, August 5, 1997. There are two opportunities for MVAs to collect SSNs on all applicants, at license issuance and renewal. Of the 6 states not collecting SSNs from all driver’s license applicants at the time of our review, 2 performed such collections during the 1980s or 1990s. MVA-collected SSNs are used in at least one of two ways by CSE programs in all but 2 of the 47 states that adhere to this federal requirement. The first way that CSE programs use MVA-collected SSNs, along with SSNs from other sources, is to help initially establish or verify the SSNs of noncustodial parents. CSE programs consult a variety of sources simultaneously when doing this, often through electronic networks that link state agencies, including MVAs, or federal agencies. The second way that MVA-collected SSNs are used in most states is to identify the driver’s licenses of noncustodial parents who are candidates for suspension. This is normally done through computer matches, where the SSN from the CSE program, the SSN from the MVA, and several other pieces of information must match prior to suspending the driver’s license of a particular noncustodial parent. CSE officials from 44 of the 47 states that are collecting SSNs found them useful, while 3 did not find them useful. The officials who found them useful said that the SSN is one of many sources that their programs consult and some of these officials elaborated on factors that make MVA- collected SSNs useful. Several explained that MVA-collected SSNs were helpful because this source included SSNs on almost everyone in the CSE system. This is presumably because MVAs have access to a wide range of people—everyone who wants a driver’s license. Others added that MVAs were particularly helpful for obtaining the SSNs of noncustodial parents who were self-employed, unemployed, or working for cash because the SSNs of these individuals tend not to be found in other more commonly used SSN sources, such as state and federal agencies that maintain employment or tax records. Finally, others explained that MVAs were particularly important for identifying the driver’s licenses of noncustodial parents who were candidates for license suspension. CSE officials in the 3 states that did not find SSNs useful, as well as in other states, cited various drawbacks to MVA-collected SSNs. First, in states where MVAs only recently began collecting SSNs, they often do not have SSNs from enough individuals for them to be of much use to the CSE program. Second, MVA SSNs can be unreliable because most MVAs do not have procedures in place for verifying that drivers are providing their correct SSN. Only 14 of the 49 MVA survey respondents who answered this question reported that they verify the SSNs that they collect with the agency that issues SSNs, the Social Security Administration. Third, in two states, CSE program officials prefer to use other sources. As of the time of our survey, six states were not complying with the Social Security Act’s requirements that they pass and implement laws mandating SSN collection on all drivers’ license applications. Three of these states— Georgia, Michigan, and Oregon—were not collecting SSNs from any applicants. Three states—Kansas, Maryland, and Minnesota— were doing so for some, but not all, applicants. The legislatures in all of the states, except Michigan, did not pass laws requiring the collection of SSNs from all applicants for driver’s licenses. Officials from the MVAs and CSE programs in these five states indicated that this noncompliance occurred, at least in part, because their programs either did not bring the need for such laws to their legislatures’ attention or did not sufficiently highlight the need. For example, a CSE official in Oregon told us that the state legislature was required to pass various laws to comply with the Social Security Act’s requirements and the need to pass a law requiring collection of SSNs on driver’s license applications was simply overlooked until sometime in 2000 or 2001.