	Background

The PARIS interstate match program was initiated to help state public assistance agencies share information with one another. Its primary objective is to identify individuals or families who may be receiving or having duplicate payments improperly made on their behalf in more than one state. In this voluntary project, the participating states agree to share eligibility data on individuals who are receiving TANF, Food Stamps, Medicaid, or benefits from other state assistance programs. Depending on the state, the same staff in local offices may determine eligibility and benefit levels for all three programs. PARIS: A Potentially Cost-Beneficial Means of Controlling Improper Payments

PARIS coordinators in most of the 16 participating states and the District of Columbia told us they believe the interstate match is effective in identifying improper TANF, Medicaid, and Food Stamps benefit payments in more than one state. This is important because even when two states do not share a border, improper payments can still be made, whether due to error or deliberate deception, such as fraud and abuse. These factors, which could also apply to any participating state, include differences in the extent to which state and local officials follow up on (or fail to pursue) match hits and take action to cut off benefits where appropriate; the methods and assumptions states use to estimate their savings; the proportion of match hits that are valid in that they are found to reflect actual improper benefits being paid in more than one state (a higher proportion of valid match hits will generally yield more program savings than a lower rate, and is more likely to be cost-beneficial);the estimated number of months of avoided benefit payments; the size of the recipient population and the monthly benefits provided in each state under the TANF, Medicaid, and Food Stamp programs;   how long it takes local office staff or fraud investigators to follow up on match hits; the salary costs of state and local staff involved with PARIS; and the cost to create an automated list of recipients at the state level to be sent to DMDC. Our analysis suggests that PARIS, as it currently operates, could help save both federal and state program funds. First, only one-third of the states are participating in the matches, and a large portion of the public assistance population is not covered by the matching. Second, the project has some problems with coordination and communication among project participants. As a result, the public assistance records of the other 34 states were not being shared with participating states. PARIS Identifies Duplicate Benefits After They Are Provided

The PARIS project was designed to identify duplicate benefits after they have been provided, not to prevent the duplicate benefits from occurring in the first place.
What GAO Found

Public assistance programs make millions of dollars in improper payments every year. Some of these improper payments occur because state and local agencies that run the programs lack adequate, timely information to determine recipients' eligibility for assistance. This inability to share information can result in both federal and state tax dollars being needlessly spent on benefits for the same individuals and families in more than one state. In 1997, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) began a project to help states share eligibility information with one another. The public assistance reporting information system (PARIS) interstate match helps states share information on public assistance programs, such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) and Food Stamps, to identify individuals or families who may be receiving benefit payments in more than one state simultaneously. Officials in almost all of the 16 states and the District of Columbia that participated in PARIS said that the project has helped identify improper TANF, Medicaid, or Food Stamp payments. Despite its successes, the project has several limitations. First, the opportunity to detect improper duplicate payments is not as great as it could be because only one-third of the states participate. Second, participating states do not have adequate protocols or guidelines to facilitate critical interstate communication. As a result, some states have reported critical problems, such as difficulty determining whether an individual identified in a match is actually receiving benefits in another state. Third, state administrators for the TANF, Medicaid, and Food Stamp programs have not always placed adequate priority on using PARIS matches to identify recipients who are living in other states. As a result, individuals may continue to receive or have benefits paid on their behalf in more than one state even after they were identified through the matching process. Finally, because the PARIS match is only designed to identify people after they are already on the rolls, it does not enable the states to prevent improper payments from being made in the first place.