SERVICE 1: ELECTRONIC PAYMENTS TO BENEFICIARIES

Pay federal beneficiaries electronically.

Other Information:

Overview: FMS supports the Department of the Treasury’s strategic goal of fostering a prudent use of taxpayer resources by providing timely, accurate, and efficient disbursements of federal payments. To more efficiently and effectively achieve this goal, FMS is working to pay federal beneficiaries electronically, rather than via paper checks. FMS will deliver all federal benefit payments for existing check recipients electronically by March 1, 2013 via direct deposit or the Direct Express® Prepaid Debit MasterCard® card. (New enrollees are required to select an electronic payment option as of May 1, 2011.) Key Customer Groups: Federal benefit recipients and federal benefit paying agencies. Challenges: Over the past two fiscal years, Treasury has disbursed an average of 822 million benefit payments each year to millions of beneficiaries. Treasury’s paperless initiative requires that the existing 8.4 million monthly federal benefit checks be converted to electronic payments by March 1, 2013. However, it is estimated that 2.7 million federal benefit check recipients are unbanked. In addition, some recipients have been resistant to voluntarily converting to electronic payments despite extensive public education efforts. Featured Actions: FMS will continue nationwide GoDirect campaign to convert current check recipients to direct deposit. Additionally, FMS will enable the GoDirect call center to process both direct deposit and Direct Express® enrollments via a single toll free telephone number or a single website and Expand the Direct Express® card to multiple benefit payment types.

Stakeholder(s):

• Financial Management Service(FMS)


• Federal Benefit Recipients


• Federal Benefit Paying Agencies

Objective(s):

S 1.1: Feedback

S 1.1: Direct Express

S 1.2: Benefit Recipient Outreach

S 1.3: Customer Experience

S 2.1: GoDirect Call Center

S 2.2: Multiple Benefit Payment Types

S 2.3: Metrics and Standards

S 2.3.1: Wait Times and Abandon Rates

S 2.3.2: Performance Measures and Accountability

S 2.4: Process Streamlining

S 2.4.1: Paper Checks

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