Good Morning Everyone and Congratulations!
You have all, once again, done an awesome job to improve our payment accuracy. In a letter to Governor Murkowski last Friday, the Food and Nutrition Service announced Alaska's official Food Stamp Program error rate for FFY 2005. Alaska's combined error rate, which includes food stamp underpayments and overpayments, is 6.51%, or, as we like to view it, 93.9% accurate! This is half a percentage point better than last year, and nearer to our Better than Average payment accuracy improvement campaign goal. The national average payment error rate was 5.84%. You have brought us close enough to the national average that we will not face any penalties - always a good thing. Thank you for your hard work to improve the FS accuracy rate. I appreciate that it is not an easy task, especially in an era of growing caseloads and program complexity. I have our improved accuracy news with Commissioner Jackson and Deputy Commissioner Bill Hogan. They are very pleased with our progress and asked me to commend and congratulate each of you on a job exceptionally well done.
The letter from FNS shared more good news. You were praised for one of the best negative sample error rates (.89%). We just missed winning a performance bonus in this category that measures the correctness of our case closures and application denials. This far exceeded the national average negative error rate of 6.91%.
As you know, we are half into our FFY 2006 campaign. Steady improvement is pushing up our accuracy rate. It is now at 95.5%, and the rolling accuracy rate for the past four months is an outstanding 96.4%. So, we've got high hopes for keeping it up and reaching our Better than Average goal of an accuracy rate better than the national average. At this rate you will surely get us there.
I would like to add to my thanks for your good work, my clear message of the importance of work quality in all our programs. Food Stamp payment accuracy gets a lot of attention because it is so closely measured, yet the work of all the clerical, eligibility and support staff working in all our programs contributes to our shared success.
And speaking of success, I'd like to acknowledge the regions and offices that are topping our 2006 campaign effort:
The Southeast Region has 97.6% payment accuracy, with the Sitka and Ketchikan offices stantding at 100%.
The Central Region is helping us a lot with 96.2% accuracy. Mat-su and its APA office are at 100%, and Muldoon has made great strides to stand at 98.3%.
The Coatal Region field office is doing well with district 70, 80, 82, and 55 food stamp sample cases proving 96.9% accurate.
The Northern Region APA Unit reports 100% accuracy.
Thank you and congratulations to all of you for an incredible accomplishment. Let's sustain our progress and beat that national average.
Ellie