Trouble-plagued welfare computer due for duty

Thursday, Aug. 10, 2000 | 10:47 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- The state welfare computer system known as NOMADS appears about ready to come online after experiencing many delays and cost overruns.

State Welfare Administrator Mike Willden said Wednesday he is confident the system, which cost more than $100 million, will pass the federal examination and that the state will get back $3.5 million it paid in fines.

Gov. Kenny Guinn sent letters this week to all district attorneys in Nevada thanking them for cooperating in converting child-support cases from other computers to NOMADS, or Nevada Operations Multi Automated Data Systems.

Guinn said many people predicted that the complex task would fail.

"I am proud to say that, aside from needing to flush out some financial information on a few cases, case conversion into the NOMADS computer system is complete," Guinn said Wednesday.

There were 195,000 cases converted.

It started out in 1988 as a $22.6 million project to comply with a federal law mandating a single system for the collection of child-support payments. It was to be completed within two years. Eleven years later, the cost has ballooned to more than $100 million, much of it paid by the federal government.

Along the way, the project has been roundly criticized by state legislators and district attorneys. It has been called an albatross, a failure and poster child on how not to build a computer system.

With the case conversion complete, Willden said the system has been tested twice and is being tested a third time to make sure the bugs are out. The state must notify the federal government by Sept. 30 that the system is ready for its examination.

Willden said the division intends to send a letter in mid-September inviting the federal inspectors, who are expected to arrive at the end of October or the beginning of November for a weeklong examination.

"We're confident we can meet certification and get out of the doghouse," said Willden, who added that the state has paid a $5 million fine but expects to get 90 percent of that returned when the project passes federal muster.

The federal inspectors will devise test cases to see if the system spews out the right answers. They will sit with the state's staff to watch operation of the system and will require the state to fill out a questionnaire of several hundred pages.

With the federal government breathing down Nevada's neck in early 1999, Guinn stepped up work to get the system completed. Extra employees were hired to transfer the information from one system to another.

Guinn told the district attorneys that child support collections have increased since "this ambitious plan began." Collections rose from $101.1 million in fiscal year 1999 to $105.6 million in fiscal 2000.

Guinn called the figures noteworthy "because many states saw collections decrease when they converted from one automated system to another."

In his letter the governor said, "We are hopeful of federal certification of the NOMADS system without incurring any additional penalties."

While 195,000 cases were converted, the number of cases in the system has risen to 202,000 as of this week because of new applications and clients.

About half of the cases involve child support. The rest are people receiving welfare, food stamps or Medicaid.

The federal government required only the single system for the child-support payments, but at the time, the Welfare Division had an antiquated computer. So it decided to start an integrated system -- the first in the nation.