It is an odd calendar we follow in the Food Stamp Program Quality Assessment process. Each federal fiscal year about 380 cases are randomly picked for review. The last of the 2004 sample was selected in September and the QA staff is finishing the last of those reviews now. We set our target at 93% payment accuracy and through your good work we are close to achieving that goal.
Take a quick look at the attached charts that show how your office and region has performed, and interestingly displays the weight each office has on statewide QA sample. Every case does matter and every office does contribute to our success. Still, you can see that the performance of some offices have great influence on our payment accuracy rate because of the number of cases drawn from there or the size of the allotments.
As you know, our 2005 Better than Average campaign payment accuracy goal is 94%. We've already drawn the first three months QA sample, yet it will be some time before we start seeing our performance trends for the new year. One thing we do know, is that the national error rate average is going down dramatically - now at 5.5% for 2004. We do need to continue or focus on the importance of work quality. Being better than average is getting harder!
I would like to recognize outstanding performance:
The Southeast Region had just one small error case in 45 cases reviewed achieving an accuracy rate of 99.2%.
The Mat-Su office has had 49 cases reviewed and has posted superb 99.2% accuracy.
The Central Region APA office has a fine accuracy rate of 98.8%
The The Northern Region's district 44 accounted for over 10% of the dollars in the statewide sample and has accomplished 98.2% accuracy.
The Kenai office has performed well with 95.7% payment accuracy.
The Bethel and Gambell offices are besting our accuracy target with 93.3% and 93.1% respectively.
Again, your effort to attain our accuracy goal is sincerely appreciated. May your bubble remain in the "Quality Quadrant".