The recent acting secretary of the state Department of Human Services elaborated on the findings of an audit that had highlighted potential annual savings of up to $68.6 million for the agency.
Christina Mullins, now back in her prior role as deputy secretary for mental health and substance use disorders, addressed the Joint Standing Committee on Finance for nearly an hour and a half on Sunday afternoon during legislative interim meetings.
The through-line of her report was a performance audit by the national firm BDO originally released in May.
Mullins addressed the high cost of out-of-state child placements and the urgent need to modernize the department’s outdated computer system.
Lawmakers wanted to get under the hood of the audit and elaborate on what’s possible or unlikely.
Much of the emphasis by Mullins was on the challenges of computer technology, particularly the monstrous computer system known as PATH that is widely viewed as both expensive and inefficient.
She acknowledged that it’s extremely unlikely that the state could just start over with a new, better system.
“We’ve spent over $300 million so far on that system. So to think about spending that much more money again is probably not affordable,” she said, later adding that the Department of Human Services views targeted system enhancements as the most practical way forward.
An intertwined challenge is the the outdated, 40-year-old backend mainframe computer that the PATH system relies on to run and store its data. A substantial portion of PATH’s core logic and data remains housed on the legacy mainframe, and PATH can’t simply be separated.
Slow load times, frequent system outages and highly manual processes that caseworkers experience in PATH are heavily driven by the technical limitations of routing data through the aging mainframe environment.
The proposed solution for the clunky mainframe is to migrate the department’s data and critical systems entirely to a cloud-based environment, rather than taking on a full, high-risk system rebuild.
The BDO audit identifies a potential $7.2 million in annual savings in mainframe maintenance and hosting costs once the migration is complete
On another central issue, Gov. Patrick Morrisey has identified reducing the number of out of state placements in the child welfare system as a priority, and the performance audit
The audit identified $142,000 per child for out-of-state placements, suggesting contracting with in-state providers as a feasible solution.
Although Mullins acknowledged that’s a long-term goal, she agreed it’s a major emphasis, calling the current approach “financially unsustainable.”
She emphasized that sending minors out of state increases safety risks and separates them from their communities and support systems.
““We are exposing youth to heightened safety risks by having them out of state,” she said. “Being closer to their communities, closer to their parents, all of those things are critically important.”
The best strategy, she said, would be to build greater in-state capacity by using existing or new facilities within West Virginia.
“I think we’re really, really leaning into the the idea of out-of-state placements. That one, you know, has a high degree of cost savings and is going to take some time. But that’s one that we’re really leaning into,” Mullins said.