California EDD Uses RightFax to Speed Process Aimed at Protecting Children
BACKGROUND
The California Employment Development Department (EDD), serving within the Labor and Workforce Development Agency, works to
improve enforcement, training and research activities serving California's workers and employers.
EDD has approximately 10,000 employees located at hundreds of sites throughout the state. As California's largest tax collection
agency and one of the largest in the U.S, the EDD Tax Branch handles the audit and collection of employment taxes and maintains
employment records for more than 19 million California workers.
Among its responsibilities, the EDD Tax Branch—specifically, its Goethe Tax Operations (GTO) office in Sacramento—captures
data for a Directory of New Hires and Independent Contractors. By law, California and U.S. employers are required to report
all newly hired employees for inclusion in state and national directories. The provision is designed to speed direct withholding
of child support from wages and help track obligated parents across state lines.
THE CHALLENGE
Every month, GTO receives up to 150,000 faxed pages of New Employee Registry (DE 34) and Independent Contractor Reporting
(DE 542) forms from California businesses.
According to Jerry Clark, GTO Chief, managing and processing the high volume of faxes posed a daily challenge. “We were receiving
and printing thousands of faxes on 14 machines in the office,” he said. “It was an ongoing headache to keep fax machines working
and stocked with paper and toner.” He explained the system even required an individual to monitor the fax machines on an ongoing
basis, checking them every hour for jams or supplies between reams of incoming faxes.
Processing the pages then became a manual, labor-intensive procedure, Clark said. Employees had to obtain the printed sheets,
then sort and batch the documents and run them through scanners. The images were then presented to operators who keyed the
information into a database. “It was a costly way to gather and manage the information,” Clark explained.
Besides the phone connection and supply costs, manpower required to support the paper-heavy system equated to full-time effort
from several employees and multiple days in processing time. This led to delays Clark and his associates wanted to eliminate
to better serve their “customers”—the children in California.
According to the Administration for Children and Families, the overall Child Support Enforcement (CSE) Program—of which the
New Hire Registry is part—works with California and other states to:
Ensure children have the financial support of both parents;
Foster responsible behavior towards children; and,
Reduce welfare costs.
Employers are required to submit new hire information within 20 days of the starting work date. Then, it is the job of the
EDD and other government agencies, including various county district attorney offices and the State Department of Justice,
to track information on the new employees that will determine if child support funds should be garnered from the paychecks.
Within its first couple years of supplying child support enforcement agencies with new hire information, the state of California
experienced a 78 percent increase in matching the identity of reported new hires and parents who are delinquent in child support
payments. Clark and others at GTO want to maintain—even enhance—these improvements with a system that tracks delinquent parents
as quickly as possible. “The faster we can process the new hire data for enforcement agencies,” Clark said, “the sooner they
can do their jobs aimed at protecting and serving children.”
SOLUTION
When Clark says “faster,” he means it. As part of the Tax Engineering and Modernization (TEAM) Project, GTO successfully implemented
an e-document delivery system that improved the entire employment tax system.
The use of Captaris RightFax production and network fax capabilities integrated with data capture software has reduced GTO’s
turnaround time for supplying information to agencies by an overall four business days—almost a full work week. Receiving
forms by fax saves an average of two business days, compared to those received through the mail, and the new integrated solution
saves an additional day in processing time.
As the world leader in e-document delivery, RightFax combines fax, email and Web technologies to provide a one-stop, full
service solution. The California EDD deployed RightFax across its 10,000 users in 1998 to meet the department-wide need for
a centralized fax solution with exceptional technical support that could use Microsoft Outlook as the client program. With
its open architecture, RightFax also leverages and integrates with other solutions. At GTO, users take advantage of the RightFax
integration with a data capture solution to speed communication and reduce costs.
“Using scalable, desktop features of the combined solution, we eliminate several time-intensive processes,” Clark said. First,
as a fax server adept at handling high volumes, RightFax enables GTO to continue offering employers the option of sending
forms via fax rather than “snail mail,” leading to an estimated savings of two business days.
Additionally, since faxes are delivered directly to users’ desktops, GTO has eliminated the need for numerous fax machines
and the supply and management expenses they require. In addition to being freed from stocking paper and replacing toner cartridges,
employees have also been relieved from the physical handling of thousands of fax pages.
“We’ve eliminated printing, handling, batching and scanning processes,” Clark said. The eradication of a paper-heavy process
has led to more than $36,000 in annual supply and related savings since the previous method required printing, scanning, and
keying into a database. Now, users receive the “original” directly to their computers so they can automatically store, organize
or export to the data capture system. This streamlined workflow has resulted in a faster data capture processing time by two
business days and reduced staff costs by approximately two personnel equivalents, amounting to almost $62,000 in annual salary-related
overhead.
RESULTS
Thanks to the department-wide use of RightFax, various services the EDD provides to California employers and workers have
been automated and improved, including the ability to efficiently respond to a dramatic rise in unemployment insurance claims
during the recent economic downturn.
Specific to GTO, Clark said: “We’re certainly glad we took on the project of modernizing our New Hire reporting process with
RightFax and the data capture software. It has provided the benefits we were seeking to gain.”
These benefits result in more efficient tracking and enforcement of child support payments. The U.S. Office of Child Support
Enforcement states: “We want to send the strongest possible message that parents cannot walk away from their children.” With
groups like the GTO on their side, the children of California are better protected.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
Captaris is a leading provider of business information delivery solutions that integrate and automate the flow of messages,
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companies, delivered through a global distribution network. Captaris has over 100,000 systems installed worldwide, with more
than 90 of the Fortune 100 using the company's award-winning products and services to reduce costs and increase the performance
of critical business information investments. For more information please contact us at: www.Captaris.com or 1.888.320.7778. Outside of the U.S. please call 1.520.320.7000.
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