ISAWS

December 2000

by Richard Bermack

The Interim Statewide Automated Welfare System, originally called SAWS, was intended to be the statewide welfare computer system in California. However, SAWS’s performance in county pilot projects got less than favorable reviews, and many counties opted out of implementing it. “Interim” was added to its name and it became ISAWS. The Dragon spoke to workers in Marin County about the system to get a sense of what issues automated welfare data systems present. The workers we spoke with found the system very problematic and hope it will eventually be replaced by a more user-friendly and reliable system.

System Not Flexible or User Friendly

Marin County Health and Human Services Chapter president and eligibility worker Adrian Fried does special investigations on cases of overpayments and possible fraud. She has been using the system since 1995 and although she supports the concept of a computer system that can reliably determine eligibility and benefits for all the programs at once, she says this isn’t the system. “There is insufficient ability to keep up with changes in regulations, so you have to figure out work-arounds. In 1998, when we went to CalWORKS, it took over a year to be able to generate notices of overpayments using the new program,” she states. “The old system was more direct. You just put in a few x’s and it issued the benefits. The new system figures out eligibility, but it doesn’t do a very good job. If they are going to have a computer that determines eligibility, it would be good if we didn’t have to lie to it,” she concludes.

One worker explains that to get the system to accurately calculate food stamp benefits for a homeless person living in a shelter, she would have to enter the nightly shelter costs as child support payments. “You need to know the [benefit] programs pretty well to be aware of why certain questions are being asked in order to make sure the information is being entered correctly,” the worker states. “It is not a stand-alone system. You can’t just let it do the work for you. You have to do the math in your head as you go along to know if there is an error. Otherwise, when you come to the end you have to figure out why it is doing the spin it put on your case. Did you miss a screen? You have to know both the regulations and the computer program well enough to figure out where in the program something went wrong, and what screen you need to fix it.”

Workers also complain that the system is very difficult to navigate. You can only go in one direction, and if you want to go to a previous screen you have to scroll through the entire case, and then start scrolling all over. There are no summary screens or easy ways to get information out of the system.

Kaye Zlataroff works the ISAWS help desk. She has worked eligibility for 27 years. She believes a good computer system is a necessity for eligibility and that ISAWS is not it. She hopes that either CalWIN or LEADER (L.A.’s system) will eventually replace it. She estimates that in at least 10% of the cases on ISAWS the worker needs to do a manual override.

Five Years Later It’s Better Than Doing it Manually

Having used the system for over five years, eligibility worker Elise Rimkeit has accommodated herself to it. “When we first started, it was very difficult to use,” she says. “It’s not user friendly, and it won’t do everything, but still, it is better than doing things manually. The clients like it better because there is not as much paperwork for them to fill out, and it probably helps with accuracy, because I go screen by screen so I remember to ask about the car or the bank account. The program does help you along in an interview.”