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said Joel Savell, former state NAC coor-
dinator at the Mississippi Department
of Human Services.
How the NAC Works
The NAC is a state-to-state data-
sharing program addressing SNAP and
D-SNAP improper payments. It was
designed to reduce dual participation
and ensure that food resources only go
to truly underprivileged beneficiaries,
made up largely of children and elderly
and disabled individuals, as well as
those who need food assistance fol-
lowing a disaster or lost income.
The consortium of states initially
set up the “Buddy State Exchange”
system, allowing each state to compare
data with certain other states, selec-
tively. After experiencing challenges
with large data volumes, manual pro-
cesses, and lacking a comprehensive
view of their identities by means of
identity resolution, the Buddy State
Exchange program evolved. With grant
support from the U.S. Department
of Agriculture’s (USDA) Food and
Nutrition Service (FNS), what started
as an exchange would become
all participants via this system, which
only looks for a SSN data match to send
results back to states for action.
Without the advanced linking
and identity resolution that the
NAC provides, the PARIS matching
process fails to utilize the majority of
identity information contributed to
provide a comprehensive match. The
result: many missed matches, a high
false-positive rate, and an extremely
inefficient and labor-intensive process,
which often result in a misdetection
of dual participation. In addition,
PARIS’ data are not timely. Reporting
occurs quarterly and significantly lags
the distribution of benefits, forcing
agencies to resort to “pay-and-chase”
recovery tactics. The “pay-and-chase”
model presents a number of chal-
lenges for states, beginning with
resource needs and coupled with the
reality that already distributed funds
have a high unlikelihood of recoup-
ment. In addition, the NAC states
identified that a large number of their
beneficiaries legitimately moved on a
month-to-month basis, something that
only the NAC’s real-time model could
account for.
For a state like Florida that utilizes
an automated PARIS process, the NAC’s
immediate identification of 3,000 dual
participants that PARIS had missed,
was revealing. The need for a real-time
solution with advanced identity reso-
lution is why states like Alabama and
Georgia choose to join the project to
create the NAC rather than implement
a PARIS solution. It is also why so many
states that are participating in PARIS
are reaching out to learn about how
they can join the NAC.
The NAC, by comparison, uses not
only a post-issuance benefit matching
but also a “prevention approach”
that strengthens program integrity
by making any necessary fraud-miti-
gating determinations at the point of
application, before benefits are ever
distributed. Due to the complexities
of state eligibility systems, the NAC
had to accommodate multiple ways
for states to access its data. The NAC
portal is a web interface, allowing
participating states to search new
applicants with a query-based model.
System-to-system access to the NAC
is also available through batch data
the NAC. The consortium selected
LexisNexis Risk Solutions to build
a system that could handle massive
amounts of data on HHS recipients and
share that information securely. A suc-
cessful one-year pilot was completed in
August 2015.
The NAC platform is quite innova-
tive. It utilizes advanced data linking
technology and identity analytics to
detect whether public assistance appli-
cants are receiving multiple benefits
within and across state lines. Using
the LexisNexis Risk Solutions open-
source high-performance computing
cluster (HPCC Systems®) technology
platform, it enables participating states
to resolve the identities of applicants
and recipients uniquely and accurately,
in real time, to determine if they are
already receiving or applying for
benefits in another state.
Until the NAC, state HHS agencies
had to rely on a range of approaches
to help detect fraudulent applica-
tions and claims, including the Public
Assistance Reporting Information
System (PARIS). State HHS agencies
are required to submit information on
Policy&Practice
August 2016
24
From left to right:
Chris Larson
is the program manager of the National Accuracy Clearinghouse at the
Mississippi Department of Human Services.
Reshma Khatkhate
is a senior program administrator in the Division of Field Operations
at the Mississippi Department of Human Services.
Tim Meeks
is a senior project manager of the National Accuracy Clearinghouse at the
Mississippi Department of Human Services.