The general well-being of children and families is a critical national policy goal. Current priorities aimed at protecting children and preserving families include an effective child support enforcement program to meet the needs of millions of parents who annually seek child support for their eligible children. In our report, Child Support Enforcement: Families Could Benefit From Stronger Enforcement Program (GAO/HEHS-95-24, Dec. 27, 1994), we found that the Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE) lacked essential management tools, such as programwide planning and goal-setting, to assess and improve program performance. On the basis of these findings, we made several recommendations to strengthen OCSE’s leadership and management of the program. Given the need to improve program management, the Chairman, Senate Committee on Finance, asked us to assess the progress that OCSE has made in implementing our previous recommendations. A rise in welfare costs resulting from out-of-wedlock birth rates and parental desertion, coupled with a growing demand to relieve taxpayers of the financial burden of supporting these families, prompted the Congress to create the national child support enforcement program. Created in 1975 under title IV-D of the Social Security Act, the program’s purpose is to strengthen existing state and local efforts to find noncustodial parents, establish paternity, obtain support orders, and collect support payments. The national program incorporated the already existing state programs. Increasingly, the child support enforcement program has faced the growing demands of millions of children and families seeking support payments. In 1995, the program reported an estimated 20.1 million cases, an increase of about 50 percent over the previous 5 years. In that year, states collected about $10.8 billion in child support payments for 3.8 million cases, or 19 percent of the program’s caseload. Expenditures to administer the child support enforcement program totaled about $3.0 billion, of which $2.1 billion was paid by the federal government. In response to the growing caseloads and as a way to improve performance, some states have privatized child support enforcement services to supplement their own state-administered programs. The program serves two populations: families receiving Aid to Families With Dependent Children (AFDC) and those who do not. The Congress believed that government welfare expenditures could be reduced and to some extent prevented by recouping AFDC benefits from noncustodial parents’ child support payments. In addition, the Congress believed that earlier enforcement of child support obligations for families not receiving AFDC could help prevent these families from needing support in the form of welfare benefits. Families entering the child support enforcement program require different combinations of services at different times. In some cases, the child’s paternity has not been established and the location of the alleged father is unknown. In these cases, the custodial parent needs help with every step: locating the alleged father, establishing paternity and a child support order, enforcing the order, and collecting the support payment. In other cases, the custodial parent may have a child support order, and child support enforcement agencies must periodically review and, possibly, modify the order as a result of changes in the employment status or other circumstances pertaining to the noncustodial parent. For AFDC recipients, the family receives the first $50 of any current child support payment each month without a decrease in its AFDC payment. Any remainder of the child support payment is retained by the federal and state governments in proportion to their respective AFDC payments. Payments that are collected on behalf of non-AFDC families are sent to the families. The child support enforcement program is an intergovernmental program involving the federal, state, and local governments. Federal responsibility for the program lies within the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Administration for Children and Families (ACF). Within ACF, OCSE central office and regional office staff develop policy and oversee the state-administered programs. Figure 1.1 illustrates the partnership arrangements among key players involved in overseeing and administering the child support enforcement program. The child support enforcement program envisions an aggressive federal role in ensuring that states provide effective child support services. Federal law requires OCSE to establish standards for state program effectiveness and to monitor the operation of state programs through periodic audits. To help ensure program effectiveness, OCSE has the authority to assess financial penalties if an audit reveals that a state has failed to meet certain program standards. Among other functions, regional office staff review state child support enforcement plans to ensure consistent adherence with federal requirements. OCSE also is authorized to work with the states to help them plan, develop, design, and establish effective programs. In addition, OCSE is responsible for maintaining effective working relationships with federal, state, and local government officials; national interest groups; and other key stakeholders in the child support field. State child support enforcement agencies are responsible for all activities leading to securing from noncustodial parents financial support and medical insurance coverage for children. The agencies provide four principal services: (1) locating absent parents, (2) establishing paternity, (3) obtaining and enforcing child support orders, and (4) collecting support payments. To meet federal requirements and receive federal funds, state child support enforcement programs must have HHS-approved plans indicating compliance with federal law and regulations and must operate in accordance with those plans. HHS can levy financial penalties against states found substantially out of compliance with their plan. There are significant differences in the ways state child support enforcement programs are organized, which state organization they report to, what relationships exist between the child support enforcement program and other state agencies, and the policies and procedures that are followed. These characteristics usually vary by the type of service delivery structure, levels of court involvement required by state family law, population distribution, and other variables. For example, some state child support agencies operate their programs with state funds through a network of regional offices, while others share the federal funding with and supervise county and other local jurisdictions’ operations. The child support enforcement funding structure was designed to share program costs between the federal and state governments. The federal government matches 66 percent of states’ administrative and certain management information systems development costs and 90 percent of laboratory costs related to paternity establishment. The federal government also pays incentives to states for collection efficiency. These incentives are calculated separately for AFDC and non-AFDC collections by dividing the amount collected for each category by total program administrative costs. On the basis of these calculations, states with higher ratios of collections to program costs receive more incentive funds than states with lower ratios. Incentive payments for AFDC collections range from amounts equal to 6 to 10 percent of the collections. Incentive payments for non-AFDC collections also range from 6 to 10 percent of non-AFDC collections but cannot be greater than 115 percent of the AFDC incentive payments. These incentive payments are funded from the federal portion of recovered AFDC collections. States must share incentives with local governments that bear some of the program’s administrative costs. However, states may use the incentive payments and AFDC recoveries to fund programs other than child support enforcement. We reported earlier that clear federal management strategies coupled with state management efforts could better position the child support enforcement program to serve the families that depend on it. The increase in children needing support has focused attention on federal and state efforts to enforce parental responsibilities to support their children. However, these efforts have been hampered by management weaknesses, such as the lack of programwide planning and accurate data, that have kept OCSE from developing specific strategies for contributing to improved program performance and judging how well the program is working. We also reported that OCSE had reduced the level of technical assistance it provided to state programs following reductions in federal program resources. Various organization and staffing changes reduced the number of federal staff assigned to the child support enforcement program, thereby creating communication problems between federal and state program officials. OCSE audits and data collection efforts, while satisfying legal requirements for monitoring and tracking the states’ programs, did not provide either OCSE or the states with adequate information on program results. Moreover, we reported that federal incentive funding was not sufficiently aligned with desired program outcomes. On the basis of these and other findings, we made several recommendations to the Secretary of HHS to focus management of the child support enforcement program on results. These recommendations address four key program areas for which OCSE has responsibility: (1) strengthening its partnership with state child support programs, (2) developing its own management strategies for how it will contribute to improved program results, (3) reorienting its audit processes to assess state results, and (4) realigning federal incentive funding with state performance. OCSE said it would address our recommendations in the course of its implementation of the Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) of 1993, legislation that focuses federal departments’ and agencies’ management on program results. GPRA requires federal agencies to reorient program management toward results. Traditionally, federal agencies have used factors such as the amount of program funds, the level of staff deployed, or the number of tasks completed as measures of performance. By only using these kinds of measures, an agency has not considered whether its programs have produced real results. Today’s environment is more results-oriented. The Congress, executive branch, and the public are beginning to hold agencies accountable less for inputs and outputs than for outcomes, such as how programs affect participants’ lives. Under GPRA, federal agencies are faced with reorienting their policies, planning efforts, and operations toward measuring and improving program results. To reorient federal planning and management, GPRA requires federal agencies to (1) define their mission and desired outcomes, (2) measure performance, and (3) report performance information as a basis for making management decisions. The first step—defining mission and desired outcomes—requires agencies to develop strategic plans containing mission statements and outcome-related strategic goals.