Auto-dialer helps increase child support payments in Arizona.(Arizona Department of Economic Security, Division of Child Support Enforcement)

In 2004, the National Training Conference in Washington offered a workshop titled "Harnessing Technology to Improve Child Support Services." At this workshop, North Carolina child support staff demonstrated that early case monitoring and intervention deters the nonpayment of child support. They presented their grant-funded pilot project to generate automated telephone reminders to custodial and noncustodial parents in several smaller counties. This proactive approach to enforcing child support orders was new and successful. When I returned to Arizona and shared that success story, we were determined to build similar proactive automation.

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Older Models

Child support business models at that time relied on powerful automated enforcement remedies that were …