DCL-00-118, Working with Federal Agencies as Employers

DCL-00-118

DEC 1, 2000

TO: ALL STATE IV-D DIRECTORS

RE: Working with Federal Agencies as Employers

Dear Colleague:

Recently we have mailed you our new publication, Working with Federal Agencies as Employers. (The publication was sent to all State IV-D Directors as well as to all county child support offices.) We have gathered these resource materials as part of our Federal Agencies Initiative, which is an effort to assist States in their interaction with federal agencies. The purpose of these resource materials is:

To provide federal agencies' addresses and contacts for sending income-withholding orders.
To streamline the process of redirecting child support payments of federal agencies from the counties to the State disbursement units (SDUs).
To assist States in understanding the coding on U.S. Treasury checks that may arrive at the SDU without enough identifying information to link to state child support cases.
To assist States as they move from paper checks to electronic check processing through electronic funds transfer/electronic data interchange (EFT/EDI).

As our nation's largest employer, the federal government has an important role in the Child Support Enforcement Program. There are approximately 150 federal agencies (about 40 of these are responsible for handling payroll for all federal agencies in the country, and these federal agencies have approximately 4.1 million employees:

1.8 million civilian employees
1.44 million military personnel
870,000 employees of the United States Postal Service

Working with Federal Agencies as Employers was sent to you in a shrink-wrapped package with 3-hole-punch pages for insertion into a notebook. Because of the recent change in legislation regarding medical support, we are enclosing here an amended page to replace page 16, titled, "Income Withholding for Medical Support Re: Federal Employees."

We welcome your feedback as to the usefulness of this publication, and we hope you will share your experiences working with federal agencies so that we can improve communication and transactions between federal agencies and State/county child support offices. If you have a specific problem or concern, please contact Nancy Benner, federal agency liaison at the Office of Child Support Enforcement (OCSE) at (202) 401-5528 or nbenner@acf.hhs.gov.

Sincerely,

David Gray Ross
Commissioner
Office of Child Support Enforcement

Enclosure

cc: Directors of County Child Support Enforcement Offices
Regional Program Managers
ACF Regional Administrators

Working with Federal Agencies as Employers