State Reps. LaVon Bracy Davis (left) and John Snyder, via Florida House of Representatives
Despite a federal lawsuit over Florida’s Medicaid unwinding following the COVID-19 public health emergency, the online system used by millions of people who apply for Medicaid, food assistance, and temporary cash assistance won praise this week as an example of an information technology project gone right.
House Information Technology Budget & Policy Subcommittee Committee Chair John Snyder lauded the Department of Children and Families (DCF) for its management of a multiyear update to ACCESS, the integrated processing system for government assistance programs.
On average, ACCESS processes 6 million applications annually and pays out $6.9 billion in temporary cash assistance and supplemental nutrition assistance, DCF Chief Information Officer Cole Sousa told the panel.
The system’s mainframe has been in use since 1982. DCF is in the third year of a six-year project to replace the 28 disparate legacy systems that comprise ACCESS as well as its 40-plus years old mainframe.
DCF is requesting that the Legislature appropriate $36.6 million for the IT project in the state fiscal year 2025-26 budget, which lawmakers will craft when they meet in their 60-day legislative session that begins March 4.
“I just want to first of all call out and commend your staff. I don’t want to jinx it because I know we’re not all the way there yet, but I think, members, what we have before us is a great example of a project that so far, with a tremendous scope, is on time, is on budget, and is moving forward without any plan amendments,” Snyder said.
The comments came during a lengthy hearing in which the committee examined a number of expensive information technology projects, including some that have taken years to finish and required millions in extra funding.
Leadership priority
House Speaker Danny Perez has made understanding the state’s IT policies and funding a priority, creating the Information Technology subcommittee, the only panel in the House that holds jurisdiction over both substantive policy and spending.
DCF and the DeSantis administration have been sued over the Medicaid unwinding, or the process following the COVID-19 public health emergency in which the states no longer needed to abide by the federal mandate that they keep everyone enrolled in the safety net health care program.
There has been no decision in the federal lawsuit to date.
The state is being accused of not notifying people why they were going to lose their health insurance or allow them to appeal before benefits were cut off. Floridians calling the DCF for help with their Medicaid or temporary cash or food assistance applications faced the second longest wait times in the country following the public health emergency, according to a Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) report.
On average, people had to wait 42 minutes to talk to an agent, and 44% of calls got abandoned.
‘I wasn’t there’
Sousa told committee members that one of the goals of the IT update is to improve overall customer satisfaction. Rep. LaVon Bracy Davis, a former DCF attorney and ranking Democrat on the panel, asked Sousa to explain why the changeover was happening now.
“So, I guess my question is simple but profound: What took you so long?” she asked. “What took so long to get to the six-year plan, because the public, the constituents, have been saying that modernization is absolutely needed. And by your own admission, we’re talking 1982.”
Sousa, who has been in his position for 3.5 years, said he didn’t know.
“I know that there were some other attempts, I think, in previous administrations, maybe going back even 10 years ago, to seek the funding to modernize the overall system, and for whatever reason that just wasn’t successful. And potentially there were a lot of reasons for that but, unfortunately, I can’t speak to that because I wasn’t there,” he said.
Sousa credited the smooth transition to date DCF Secretary Shevaun Harris.
“She recognized the system was very old, antiquated, that we could just do a better job getting out services to people, faster, quicker, and just making our workforce more efficient. And that’s really been the task of the agency to get this modernization done,” said Sousa.
Feeling shady
The committee’s meeting this week was dedicated to hearing IT updates from four agencies as well as their legislative budget requests for the coming year.
While lauding DCF’s IT update, committee chair Snyder said the compliment was not meant to “throw shade at any other project or any other agency.”
The Department of Financial Services’ PALM (planning accounting and ledger management) was first green-lit by the Legislature in 2014 and still isn’t completed. The Department of Financial Services is requesting $64 million for the project, which already has cost the taxpayers $285.8 million. If the Legislature agrees to the new financial infusion, DFS’ IT project will have cost taxpayers $349.8 million.
The Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) is behind on its Medicaid management information system update, called Florida Health Care Connections, dubbed FX. AHCA has attributed delays on the massive IT update in part to a lack of staff needed to get the job done. To that end, the Legislature authorized the agency to hire an additional 47 IT staff for the FX project in the current year budget.
Florida Deputy Secretary for Medicaid Brian Myer told the House panel AHCA has hired staff and is in the process of hiring more, and that it will have filled 17 of the 47 positions.
A spreadsheet shows that AHCA anticipates it will have spent $334 million on the FX system by the end of this fiscal year. Most of that money, or $293.7 million, represents federal funds. AHCA is requesting the Legislature appropriate $28.4 million in the 25-26 budget for the IT update.
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.