It’s that time of year when we take stock of where we’ve been and chart a course for where we’re headed. I can hardly believe I’m wrapping up my first year as OCSE Commissioner -- it’s been wonderful, productive, and a whirlwind.
I started the year emphasizing my theme of engagement, and I’ve been fortunate to meet and collaborate with colleagues across the country. I’ve attended nine state conferences, seven tribal conferences, and 10 stakeholder engagement events. These gatherings gave me a chance to see the inspiring work you do to make our program so successful.
I also talked about engagement through my 3Ps: People, process, and performance. We hit the ground running and have accomplished a lot in each of these areas:
- People: We’re supporting those in uniform with our updated Handbook for Military Families, celebrating and uplifting fathers, helping families around the world through international collaboration, increasing support for domestic violence survivors, and supporting healthy relationships for youth.
- Process: We’re bringing stakeholder voices into important decisions through our Lived Experience Toolkit, streamlining portal communication with our Communication Center, and advancing equity in child support.
- Performance: We published our first ever tribal infographic, and then updated the infographic with FY21 data (PDF). We also published our FY21 national infographic (PDF), and developed materials to promote these impressive statistics.
Priorities
In addition to the 3Ps strategy, OCSE has three priorities that align with the vision for increased engagement. Here are just a few ways we’ve made important progress on these priorities:
- Extend flexibilities to programs during public emergencies: We published the Paternity Establishment Percentage Performance Relief Final Rule to provide targeted and time-limited relief from penalties in the wake of the COVID-19 public health emergency. This rule is effective May 27, 2022.
- Improve our collaboration with tribal programs: We’ve been working to improve support to our tribal child support programs using human-centered design principles.
- Reinvest in programs that support fathers and further employment: We’ve continued to host Knowledge Works webinars to support child support-led employment services programs.
I’m extremely proud of what we’ve accomplished this year, but there’s more work to do to support children and families across the country. Let’s use this momentum to keep engaging stakeholders and working to improve our program.
Tanguler Gray, Commissioner
This blog gives the commissioner a forum to communicate directly with child support professionals and other stakeholders about relevant topics. The Commissioner’s Voice is reprinted from the December 2022 Child Support Report newsletter.