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* Sheesh…
Remember last Christmas when the computers "glitched" and cutoff a bunch of SNAP cards?
$300M IT system still kicking thousands of Illinoisans off Medicaid and SNAP, caseworkers overloaded, claims delayed up to 7 monshttps://t.co/lQPBkZE0GY
— Rae Hodge (@RaeHodge) May 1, 2018
* From the story…
More than 40,000 Medicaid recipients were wrongly barred from crucial support services last October after an update to the Department of Human Services’ electronic enrollment system triggered widespread IT failures. Seven months later, the problems persist. Some vendors still haven’t been paid for emergency services to Medicaid patients. Health and Family Service employees are still buried under mountains of paper applications. And the number of those kicked off Medicaid has grown to more than 150,000.
Caseworkers with the department, benefits recipients and human services advocates gathered in Chicago Monday to offer testimony to the House Appropriations Human Services Committee. They said the IT problems and resulting paperwork pile-up have become pervasive since the second-phase roll-out of Gov. Bruce Rauner’s technology consolidation plan, the Integrated Eligibility System upgrade.
Witnesses told lawmakers while Deloitte’s $300 million system was supposed to ease the labor load on DHS’ sharply slashed workforce numbers by automating certain data entry processes, it has instead more than doubled their work. Similar Deloitte creations have faced multi-million dollar state government lawsuits across the nation. […]
[Lori Gladsden, a human services caseworker out of Tazewell County] pointed to case after case of protracted, manual data entry that bogged down workers. In one glaring instance, she described a last-minute announcement just two days before the IES roll-out, notifying DHS workers that 11,000 old cases would not be transferred into the new system as promised. […]
“When you hear about hundreds of millions of dollars in savings, that’s because you’ve knocked people off the rolls and it will take them seven months to get back on. For those seven months those people do not get their healthcare,” [Rep. Greg Harris, D-Chicago] said. “Do you attribute this to incompetence or do you attribute this a plan? I don’t know, but we intend to continue to look into this and find out.”
More on Deloitte’s problems can be found here.
…Adding… Ugh…
It was heartbreaking to listen to one mom on how DHS screw-ups were forcing her to choose between trying to get care for her Developmentally Disabled, nonverbal daughter who suffers from seizure disorders, or her son who is about to run out of meds for his severe mental illness.
— Rep. Greg Harris (@repgregharris) May 1, 2018
Lots more stories on Rep. Harris’ Facebook account.
posted by Rich Miller
Tuesday, May 1, 18 @ 11:35 am
Sorry, comments are closed at this time.
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Yep, working as designed. /s
Comment by a drop in Tuesday, May 1, 18 @ 11:39 am
Deloitte’s performance makes you long for the Arthur Andersen days.
Comment by City Zen Tuesday, May 1, 18 @ 11:42 am
Tough call with the Rauner crew when it comes to incompetence or misanthropy.
But since it’s poor people getting tuned up, I’ll go with “plan.”
If Deloitte ever misses getting paid for their “work,” I’ll chalk it up to incompetence.
Comment by wordslinger Tuesday, May 1, 18 @ 11:43 am
IES was meant to cancel cases with no rede. But what was not known was that IES would cancel cases that had a timely rede that had not yet been processed by a caseworker. There is currently a workaround for this month. Basically the system is faked out so it won’t batch those cases out. But there are unintended consequences when you do stuff like that. Also what was not planned was that the fax number on the rede form hasn’t worked all year. So part plan and part messup.
Comment by union proud Tuesday, May 1, 18 @ 11:49 am
This is not the first instance where Deloitte has screwed up the roll out of a technology system that was supposed to make accessing benefits “easier” for low-income families. In 2014, their botched Child Care Management System delayed parent approvals for child care subsidies, and delayed payments to providers for months.
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2014-03-01/business/ct-illinois-child-care-providers-0229-biz-20140301_1_child-care-maria-whelan-state-payments
Comment by Anonni Tuesday, May 1, 18 @ 11:52 am
I’m going with intended. Why? Because everyone from the ground level up who even touched training with this system knew it wasn’t ready for prime time. The fact that it was pushed out regardless of readiness tells me they had zero intention of it working correctly at first. The fact that we are seven months in and they’re just now starting to acknowledge connectivity issues with the system is ridiculous.
Comment by Fixer Tuesday, May 1, 18 @ 12:08 pm
“Let’s run government like a business”
Comment by Molly Maguire Tuesday, May 1, 18 @ 12:10 pm
I don’t necessarily think they sat down and said “let’s totally botch the roll out of the new system so that thousands get kicked off aid.”
I do think that no one in the administration made making sure the people that need this support are the priority. They prioritized speed, giving contracts to their friends, cutting admin costs, etc. At no point did they analyze what they planned to do/were doing from the lens of “how could this impact those we are trying to serve? Will it help them? Will it hurt them?” This was not a people-focused exercise. It has all the marks of an administration run by a guy that buys companies, breaks them up, sucks out as much cash as he can, and moves on. Example 4,392 of why “government run like a business” is a horrible idea.
Comment by Montrose Tuesday, May 1, 18 @ 12:11 pm
=Deloitte’s $300 million system….=
why $300 million?
Like Loreal - because their worth it.
Comment by Deadbeat Conservative Tuesday, May 1, 18 @ 12:13 pm
Messing with the poor and weak probably part plan. The rest is incompetence I dont suppose anyone put in a penalty clause in the contract so vendor does not get paid for a non working system and actually has to pay a penalty?
Comment by DuPage Saint Tuesday, May 1, 18 @ 12:32 pm
This is my honest assessment of intentionality
1) conversion errors ( like citizenship with 89yo) unintentional
2) defaulting all recipients to “full time student” status - intentional ( they could invoke special student policy at any time to eliminate hundreds of thousands.
3) not transferring any previous case notes from 10/01/17 or before- intentional
4) over engineering every page and function- intensional
5) cases not certifying with too many household members- unintentional
6) holding up underpayment supplements for supervisor authorization- intentional ( thus DHS screwed up your supplemental benefits are floating around Springfield
7) cutting off medical benefits for hundreds of thousands- intensional. ( big data has allowed them to choose targets to test. I see the people coming in to get it restored. They absolutely fit a profile. )
8) having 4 people answer phones, 6 people seeing people who come in, no express line, poorly defined job duties, no competent supervision, tech support or training for my office which serves 52,000 with 70 HSC-
Totally intensional
Designed to fail
Actively failing
Perfect set up
And justification
For non union
Privatization
Being totally honest
Look caseworkers bare a
Huge emotional toll
We are helpless to help
The good people of our communities
The stories we all carry
And Ron wants us to
Loose our meager tier II
retirement pension
At the end of this
Do you see why AFSCME’s
Are motivated to make change?
Comment by Honeybear Tuesday, May 1, 18 @ 12:32 pm
Oh and just for the record
I love what I do for a living
I live my faith every day
Caring for good people
And I also protect my states resources
By keeping benefits out of the hands
Of those who shouldn’t get them.
What faith do you live for every day Ron?
Comment by Honeybear Tuesday, May 1, 18 @ 12:36 pm
Incompetence IS the plan.
Comment by 47th Ward Tuesday, May 1, 18 @ 12:38 pm
===I see the people coming in to get it restored. They absolutely fit a profile===
Please explain.
Comment by Rich Miller Tuesday, May 1, 18 @ 12:41 pm
I’m not sure how much it matters now that the damage is done what percentage is to be chalked up to “incompetence” and what to “deliberate plan.”
This does, however, highlight one issue with massive-scale outsourcing of software: the frequent disconnect between the software/ its users (both agencies and their clients). The problems were undoubtedly exacerbated by the centralizing of IT services by the state, which created a further layer of remove from real-time users of all parts of the system.
As I noted at the end of yesterday’s related post and thread, this deserves a major investigative report: Deloitte didn’t come through big-time, and the cost overrides were enormous to boot.
What went wrong? A lot, afaict.
Will anybody be compelled to pay for this failure? Ah, there’s the rub.
Comment by dbk Tuesday, May 1, 18 @ 12:50 pm
The professor was called in last week after a Deloitte build affected this “system”, The build did not affect DHS but another agency that uses IES. I thought the folks I were working with were going to shed a tear.
I was disappointed to find I was the first person to show up to offer assistance. The IT consolidation was/is necessary, we’re just it doing a very good job of of it.
Comment by ProfessotChaos Tuesday, May 1, 18 @ 1:13 pm
Didn’t deliver what was promised nor were they made to correct and deliver. Its not just IES, it’s the financial system that Agencies are being made to purchase, it’s the unstaffing in order to privatize. This Administration spent/ing millions for no work, no product. Really the desire to destroy the unions has fundamentally destroyed agencies, ie insurance, banking, ides and dhs. Terrible and someone should demand an audit of all the privatization / consulting contracts. And put a hold on all pending until such audit.
Comment by Wow said I Tuesday, May 1, 18 @ 1:18 pm
As with a lot of other issues during this administration, things that would normally be chalked up to “incompetence” somehow magically align with the overall “plan”. Remember how “of course the governor didn’t mean for the tax hike veto to be overridden” suddenly turned into “since Madigan and those tax-raising rascals in the GA provided funding…..”? Or how “wasteful government spending will not be tolerated by Gov. Rauner” all of a sudden became “hey Trey Childress just happened to know some people at the company with the lowest bid, that’s all a big coincidence”?
Comment by Lester Holt’s Mustache Tuesday, May 1, 18 @ 1:23 pm
Keep in mind Rich these are only the ones I have restored. Experiential evidence only. But I restore several cases a day. Enough to see a pattern. Almost without exception they appear healthy, they are younger, usually no dependents, and the majority of the time they didn’t even realize their medical case was closed, or they tried to get a prescription or appointment and they got turned down. Again I’m being honest. This could be just luck of the draw. But another thing that I’ve seen is being denied 6months into a medical extension with a totally new mid point report being missed. Another tricky way of playing gotcha. This population moves a lot. Thus it’s do easy to send a response required letter and cut someone off.
Regardless on the front line, we see the issues trending first hand. Cases getting stuck in redetermination mode is a glitch. Five people in a row coming in for the same thing raises eyebrows.
On the other hand bureau of collections are catching overpayments like never before. The system finds income or a new job and shuts off the tap, forcing them to. One in to see a caseworker. Fraud by unreported work is being caught at a record pace. That’s great. But it’s the people that are doing everything right and getting cut off that is wrong, just plain wrong. IES is a case killing machine. For good and bad
Comment by Honeybear Tuesday, May 1, 18 @ 1:27 pm
Deloitte is literally a scam. The auditing they do is even more laughable than these botched implementations. If I were the Governor, I’d find out when their next “status update meeting” is and crash the party, dispense a world class reaming and have my GC work out the process to terminate the K immediately.
Comment by Big 4 Tuesday, May 1, 18 @ 1:47 pm
The state had hoped a lot of work would be more automated by people using the new Manage My Case portal. This allows people to upload information and report changes without having to use a fax or snail mail. The challenge is the ID proofing is linked to credit agencies. So persons who have no credit history or have locked their credit history can’t verify their identity. This often is young adults with severe developmental disabilities. People you don’t want sit in an office due to their fragile health. Unfortunately they need to go to the office and sit for long times because they have no way to get through on the phones. When they face the workers the worker has no clue that that the MMC does not work for them. Tempers are getting short on all sides, the workers and the poor customer who just wants their medication or medical care often for severe health issues. Not well thought out at all to put it mildly.
Comment by illinifan Tuesday, May 1, 18 @ 1:51 pm
This is just another example of the the state of Illinois failing to do the job well. IT services throughout DHS are terrible, systems don’t talk to each other and don’t do the job that is needed. But the state never consults with the end user, they always go it alone. This has been true for multiple governors.
Comment by NeverPoliticallyCorrect Tuesday, May 1, 18 @ 2:52 pm
So then it’s safe to say that DHS isn’t the agency without computers and with union work rules preventing them?
Comment by Skeptic Tuesday, May 1, 18 @ 3:38 pm
-makes me long for the days of Arthur Andersen-
Thanks for the props, City Zen. Lol.
To the Post, does anyone wonder if the similar problems happening in other states are because Deloitte is hustling an off-the-shelf system nationwide that poorly integrates with/replaces different legacy systems and business processes, causing chaos at go time? It wouldn’t be the first time this has happened, though not necessarily with Deloitte.
Comment by Arthur Andersen Tuesday, May 1, 18 @ 3:46 pm
HoneyBear
I am not there, but I am not sure if ‘intentional’ is bad intent or just bad process.
Consulting firms seem to have a very distinct gift for failing to understand how a process within a business works. I was involved on the customer side with a large project for a company in Chicago that directly or indirectly is involved in a large number of real estate transactions in various ways. The amount of time I had to spend with the consultants to explain how property ownership worked still makes me shake my head 20 years later. The arguments about our customers, the functionality, etc were truly epic. They knew everything, we didn’t know anything. What do you mean banks might be slow to use the system starting in 1999 (banks were all busy with Y2K issues), had that argument more than once.
Do not underestimate the inability of a consulting firm to ‘get it’ nor the ability of management to think the consultants are brilliant.
Comment by OneMan Tuesday, May 1, 18 @ 4:59 pm
@ Honeybear and DHS/HFS staffers:Wasn’t the new system the one we shared with the State of Michigan and was supposed to be better/faster at everything? I wonder how Michigan is doing with theirs?
Understaffing is the norm; during a DHS appeal hearing, the local Hearing Coordinator admitted staff couldn’t be properly trained, leading to errors in my case…
Comment by revvedup Tuesday, May 1, 18 @ 5:21 pm
I attended some of the early presentations on the new IT systems. I was not impressed.
One consistent approach was to discount the value of systems that were key to operations, but not connected to the financial systems. All the systems were going to be tied together, whether they needed to be or not.
Unlinked systems can act as barriers to system failure. A failure in the financial system would not cascade into the unlinked case management system.
Comment by Last Bull Moose Tuesday, May 1, 18 @ 5:44 pm
There seems to be a fundamental question that know one is asking yet easily answered. What % of the folks removed from SNAP/Medicaid is because of they did not proactively manage their rede vs. what % is because of system errors. That would be the answer to the question of is it a policy decision or a system one. My guess is a vast majority are because individuals in the past did not have to proactively manage their rede’s and therefore need to learn how the new policy of auto-removal will affect their benefits. The bubble is the learning process. That said, it seems that this is the % in which we should be looking.
Comment by Mod Dem Wednesday, May 2, 18 @ 9:02 am