ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, February 21, 1996 TAG: 9602210044
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: LESLIE TAYLOR STAFF WRITER
A COMPUTER SYSTEM that was supposed to streamline welfare applications has turned out to be, in the words of one user, awkward, inefficient and time-consuming. Now, state police are looking into possible criminal violations.
A Virginia State Police investigation into the Department of Social Services' problem-plagued computer system focuses on possible criminal violations, a state police official said Tuesday.
But Lt. Col. Wayne Garrett, director of the state police Bureau of Criminal Investigations, said it is too early to determine what kind of violations may have occurred in the development of the computer system known as ADAPT.
"We haven't assessed the total picture yet," he said. "We don't know the exact direction we're going in. We're just doing a general review of facts and circumstances to determine if there are any criminal violations that deal with the ADAPT program."
ADAPT - an acronym for Application Benefit Delivery Automation Project - was designed to make it easier for people to apply for welfare benefits. Clients now see different social workers for Aid to Families with Dependent Children, Medicaid and food stamps. The goal of ADAPT was to create a "one client-one worker" structure.
The state spent $17 million - half of it federal money - on program development and equipment for ADAPT. The project was behind schedule and over budget before Gov. George Allen's administration declared it unworkable.
"It hasn't moved along very efficiently," said Corinne Gott, superintendent of the Roanoke Department of Social Services. "We have workers trained but don't have computers to implement it. We're hanging out there halfway in and halfway out.
"It's just a lot of wasted effort that we've put into this thing."
Garrett said state police were asked to investigate two weeks ago and are working with the attorney general's office. Robert Metcalf, secretary of the state Department of Health and Human Resources, asked for the investigation through Secretary of Public Safety Jerry Kilgore, Garrett said.
Allen mentioned the investigation in an interview Monday with a Richmond television station. Allen told WWBT that the investigation could extend back to Gov. Douglas Wilder's administration. It was under the Wilder administration that the Virginia Department of Social Services conceived ADAPT and began spending money to develop it.
The House of Delegates has directed the Joint Legislative Audit and Review Commission, a legislative watchdog agency, to assist in the state police investigation.
Philip Leone, JLARC's staff director, said Tuesday that the commission will conduct a special investigation of ADAPT and report by June 1 to the House Appropriations and Senate Finance committees.
"We'll look at the life of the system, when it came about, how they planned it, how well it's working, how much it cost, why it isn't working as it was intended, questions dealing with management, accountability," he said.
The state began phasing in ADAPT three years ago in 10 pilot sites across the state. The system originally was to be up and running statewide last year, but that target date was extended to 1997.
Initially, ADAPT was projected to cost $55 million to operate for five years. That projection had risen to $84 million.
In a letter this month, Clarence Carter, acting commissioner of the state Department of Social Services, wrote that a review of audits and other documents showed that significant mistakes were made in the way ADAPT was developed.
"While it is painful to recognize this fact and to pause now to reassess, it is our duty as stewards of the taxpayers' money to ensure that this money is spent as wisely as possible," Carter wrote. "We simply cannot allow taxpayers' dollars to continue flowing into a system that is both cost-prohibitive and structurally not capable of achieving the goals originally outlined in 1993" by the Department of Social Services.
Carter - whose letter was distributed to the state Board of Social Services last week - wrote that there was no more money available to take ADAPT statewide. The department plans to replace ADAPT with a new system, Carter wrote. But he could not estimate how much that would cost.
ADAPT's first pilot site was Charlottesville. Robert Cox, director of that city's Social Services Department, said the system has "worked as we expected it to work. Start-up problems were fewer than anticipated."
But after two years, the department has only one of the program's three components in place, Cox said.
"We're handling food stamp cases one way and handling the others another way," Cox said. "It's very awkward, inefficient, more time-consuming than it should be."
Martin Brown, director of public relations for the state Social Services Department, said money spent on ADAPT so far will not be "flushed down the drain."
"There are salvageable parts of the system that we're going utilize," he said Tuesday. "What we're doing at this point is pausing to reassess where we are. After that, we'll determine what we need to do to provide localities with a system. We'll create a new system that will hopefully fold into workable, salvageable parts of ADAPT."
Some information for this story came from The Associated Press.
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