New Reporting Instrument

TO: All IV-D Directors
RE: New Reporting Instrument

Dear Colleague:

We are pleased to send you the final Action Transmittal for the new statistical reporting form, the OCSE-157, with its instructions. The OCSE-157 is the result of a State and Federal partnership that began several years ago with the Measuring Excellence Though Statistics (METS) initiative. We want to thank all State and Regional people who were involved in the successful completion of this effort.

This final version of the OCSE-157 contains a three-page form and 21 pages of instructions. We suggest that you destroy any draft versions you have, however, most of the changes between the attached final version and the one sent to you in a letter dated November 14, 1997, are minor. They are as follows:
•On page 4, number 5, the edit for line 22 now reads: Line 22 Line 21.
•On page 9, second paragraph, first sentence now reads: Section A, C, and most of Section B require counting the entire open IV-D caseload, while most of sections D through J require counting activities for the fiscal year for which the State is reporting.
•On page 12, line 3, second paragraph, the last line stating: These cases are a subset of and should have been counted in line 1 was deleted.
•On page 21, line 41, now reads: Report the number of administrative enforcement cases received from another State for which one or more collections were made during the fiscal year.

In addition, we were asked to clarify reporting of cases for which States lack jurisdiction, so the following sentence was added to Section A:
•On page 12, the following paragraph was added under line 3. Non-jurisdiction cases report on this line should not be reported in any other section and on any other line on this report. Please note that the accuracy of this information is subject to audit review.

Please note that one substantive change was required due to new incentive legislation recently enacted by Congress:
•Under line 29, the following paragraph was added: Only include those cases in which all or part of the past-due support was distributed to the family, or for those cases in which all the past-due support was subject to an assignment to the State. Do not include cases where the past-due support was received through the State or Federal tax offset systems.

The OCSE-157 will become effective beginning October 1,1998, and will replace the OCSE-156 and the OCSE-158. The final OCSE-156 and 158 reports will be due to the Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE) by October 30, 1998. States should submit their first OCSE-157 report by October 30, 1999, reflecting annual data for fiscal year 1999.

Also enclosed you will find a list of formulas OCSE plans to use to compute the proposed new individual State incentive measures. The formulas provide specific information on which forms and which line numbers the data will be taken from to calculate the incentive measurements. We hoped that, this information will assist you in reaching and maintaining acceptable performance levels in the areas of paternity establishment, cases with orders, collections on current support, collections on arrears, and cost-effectiveness.

Sincerely,

David Gray Ross
Commissioner
Office of Child Support Enforcement