ACES - Still Young, but Impacting 270,000 Lives a Month

By Jerry McCarthy

Maine’s ACES was completed in 2002…the result of a several year planning and design effort of the Bureau of Family Independence. Keane, Inc., an IT consulting and design firm, was the primary contactor on the project. Replacing our 23-year-old Bull-housed legacy "WELFRE" system, ACES was to be a cutting-edged and web-based new standard for eligibility systems. An interactive interview and every day language were to replace data entry forms, complicated codes filling DOS-style screens, and a clerk/terminal operator processing reams of information. A rules engine would use that information to cascade through nineteen potential program possibilities and offer a list of benefit types and levels. Best choices would be made and accepted, results would be immediate and notice was to be automatic. And ACES is all of that.

Immediately upon implementation and following a caseload conversion (automated mostly, but augmented a little with data not available in WELFRE), ACES began issuing benefits, and touching lives.

• Today ACES maintains medical assistance eligibility records for nearly 267,000 individuals in over 14 coverage groups. More than 17,500 MaineCare actions (openings, closings, coverage type changes) are made monthly in ACES.

• Today ACES issues nearly $13.5 million monthly in Food Stamp benefits to 153,965 individuals in 79,755 households. The benefits are issued via EBT (Electronic Benefit Transfer) cards allowing clients immediate and discriminate access at local markets and grocery stores. During the month of November, 2004, ACES processed nearly 16,000 Food Stamp actions such as openings, denials, changes and closings.

• Today, ACES issues over $5,311,570 monthly in Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) and Parents as Scholars (PaS) benefits to more than 23,500 children in 13,796 households. These benefits are also issued by EBT card.

• ACES issues other monthly payments (State Supplement, Emergency Assistance, Alternate Assistance) of over $450,200. These benefits are issued by check and through an interface with MFASIS.

Noteworthy too is the fact that ACES provides case-management support for over 9,700 ASPIRE/PaS clients and handles the monthly issuance of a number of ASPIRE Support Services totaling $2,026,675 (for December, 2004), through that MFASIS interface.

Alas, ACES does generate some degree of user angst. It took a number of years to make WELFRE work as well as it did. And now some time is being required to get all of the kinks and cranks worked out of ACES…and all of the fixes, adjustments and improvements made. As improvements are implemented, and staff become increasingly familiar with all of the functionality of ACES, we will continue to reduce paperwork and forms, interview, case maintenance and decision-making time, and processing errors.

Certainly, ACES is not bad for a product built in two and half years. Systems involving this amount of data and complexity can cost many times more than the ACES implementation. ACES needed to be an economical system and it has been. ACES may not be the ultimate "multi-tasker" but it does come close. And just like that other "stuff", it is aging toward perfection.

Questions? Contact the author, who works in the Houlton office by calling 532-5067 or e-mailing Jerry.McCarthy@maine.gov.