There's good news to share regarding our Better Than Average food stamp payment accuracy campaign. We did top our 2004 goal of 93% payment accuracy. I received a message from the FNS Regional Food Stamp Program Director today saying it's a sure thing that Alaska will be the state with the most improved payment accuracy in FFY 2004. It will be a few months until the formal annoucement is made and our award amount determined, so we'll be recognizing your acheivement and celebrating more at that time.
You'll be pleased to know that our Director, Kitty Farnham, did a fine touting our accomplishments and singing your praises to a legislative House committee that had specifically asked about the Food Stamp Program error rate. And we've been asked to do some more horn tooting for the Senate committee next week. Much more fun than explaining the causes for high payment error rates and sanctions.
We have completed the FFY 2004 Food Stamp QA Summary Report that provides details about how we performed. Here's a link to the report
http://dpaweb.hss.state.ak.us/main/fs/QA_FSP_2004_Final_Report.pdf.
Do take a few minutes to look at charts in the report that depict how each region did and the nature of the errors in our sample. There were strong results overall, with all regions showing major improvement.
There were a few exceptional achievements that need to be noted:
- The Southeast Region achieved an accuracy rate of 99.2% (45 sampled cases/1 small error)
- The Mat-Su Office also posted a 99.2% accuracy rate (49 sampled cases/1 small error)
- The Anchorage APA staff was near perfect with 98.8% accuracy
- The Northern Region's District 44 finished the year with 97% accuracy, really helping the region
attain 94.1% accuracy - The Kenai office was another shining star with a 95.7% accuracy rate
- The Bethel office deserves praise for exceeding our target and finishing with 93.3% accuracy. Bethel has the greatest single office influence on our error rate, and when they do well it really helps!
The quest for quality never rests, and our Better than Average campaign continues. For 2005 we set the food stamp payment accuracy target up a notch to 94%. It does takes some time before enough reviews are completed to show our 2005 accuracy trends. With about 40 reviews complete our accuracy rate is now 88.1%. We do need a strong start to assure we reach our 94% accuracy goal.
Thanks for keeping up the work quality focus. Jim