With three full months of our 2005 quality control sample completed, we have some results to share with you. After a rocky start we are climbing back toward our Better than Average campaign goal of 94% Food Stamp Program payment accuracy. We now stand at 92.4%. It's good to see that number rising to overcome some large errors in October. In keeping with our campaign theme, we're still aiming to do better than the national average. If we can do that, we also avoid having to pay a past penalty for high error rates.
So far, one obvious trend is that all the payment errors have been agency-caused. There is a silver lining though because agency errors are more within our ability to control than client errors. Sometimes it helps us to be a bit lucky too. In the last two months there were seven payment errors that were under $25, and by QC rules we don't have to report them. (We like that rule!). Still, it does make us anxious when too many sampled cases have even small miscalculations of benefits. That said, we are doing pretty well, thanks to your everday efforts toward building sustained work quality. The Southeast, Northern and Coastal Regions are exceeding our target goal.
Maintaining that payment accuracy focus is our ticket to success in this year's campaign. April will be the seventh monthly sample for 2005. It gets harder to increase our accuracy rate later in the as the cumulative volume dollars in the sample grows, so a good start is always important. There are some other good quality indicators for us. Our ATAP accuracy rate is over 98% and we have been perfect in the FS negative sample that measures the quality decisions to deny applications and close cases.
To see how your region and office are doing so far you can click on the happy face on DPAWeb, or this address will take you straight to the current report: http://dpaweb.hss.state.ak.us/main/fs/fs_district_report_05.pdf
Thanks for the part you each play in our success. Keep up the good work.
Jim Dalman
Chief, Program Integrity and Analysis