I wanted to share with you some good news on our Better Than Average food stamp accuracy improvement campaign. You all know our goal is to perform better than the national average, and achieve at least 93% food stamp payment accuracy in Federal Fiscal Year 2004. So far, your hard work and increased focus on work quality appears to be yielding results. Thank you for your contribution to improving our accuracy.

As many of you know, DPA launches a yearly EITC (Earned Income Tax Credit) campaign to help raise awareness of the benefits of the EITC as well as the Advance EITC. Similar to past efforts, we will once again focus our marketing towards informing Public Assistance recipients of tax credit opportunities.

Here is a brief summary of the Division's campaign activities for 2004:

The Program Integrity and Analysis (PI&A) section has been working to make DPA performance measures available to you online. Currently the District Office, the Work Services performance measures and the Food Stamp Accuracy Campaign pages are available. These measures can be accessed from the PI&A web page.

Happy New Year Everyone!

Our first star has been a loyal, hardworking employee of DPA's for nearly 25 years. Deemed "The Duke of Earl" he is described as a lean, mean bean-counting machine. One of those quiet but efficient behind the scenes DPA workers, this multi-skilled, multi-tasker puts his 110% into the job. Whether that job be processing heating, child care or fee agent payments, reconciling the EBT system with the State accounting system, the FS account with the Federal Reserves Bank, answering phones, doing the mail run or building strong, solid relationships with Alaskan vendors and utility companies. Give him the work and he gets it done promptly and well.

Happy New Year Everyone. You all know that we have set improving work quality as a high priority for the Division of Public Assistance. Our Better than Average! campaign has set a goal of 93 percent Food Stamp Program payment accuracy by October 2004. We aim to finish the year below the National average error rate. We are starting to see improvement from your hard work and the quality initiatives that offices have put in place.