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DEAR COLLEAGUE LETTER

DCL-04-17

DATE: April 19, 2004

TO: ALL STATE IV-D DIRECTORS

RE:  Cost Allocation Methodologies Toolkit

Dear Colleague:

Increasingly, as new technologies and approaches like enterprise architecture have become available, as a result states are beginning to design and implement systems to administer several Federal and State programs simultaneously.  Federal agencies use the Advance Planning Document (APD) process to receive and approve State agency requests for Federal Financial Participation (FFP) for systems with anticipated total acquisition costs (both Federal and state funds) of $5,000,000 or more.  As part of the APD process, state agencies are required to submit cost allocation information beginning with state agency system planning and continuing through system development and operations.  Cost allocation is a procedure that state agencies use to identify, measure, and equitably distribute system costs among benefiting state and Federal public assistance programs.  

As part of the Office of Child Support Enforcement’s (OCSE) on-going efforts to provide technical assistance we have developed a Cost Allocation Methodologies Toolkit.  The CAM toolkit’s purpose is to model a simple, consistent, and objective cost allocation methodology to:

• Help states determine equitable distributions of software development costs to Federal and State benefiting programs over the system development lifecycle
• Help expedite the Federal approval process for state Cost Allocation Plans

By providing a simple, consistent, and objective method to plan and document system and cost allocation data.

The toolkit is made up of the following products:

• CAM-TOOLKIT Handbook (MS Word 2000) - presents a comprehensive introduction to cost allocation.  It contains practical guidance on preparing Cost Allocation Plans throughout the system lifecycle in conjunction with the Federal Advance Planning Document (APD) process
• CAM-TOOL (MS Excel 2000) - provides a consistent, objective cost allocation process you can use to identify all Federal and State benefiting programs and to calculate an equitable distribution of software development costs among those benefiting programs
• CAM-TOOL User Guide (MS Word 2000) - contains step-by-step procedures and screen displays to illustrate how to capture and analyze the data needed for cost allocation
  

These products are now available on the OCSE website at:

 http://www.acf.hhs.gov/programs/cse/stsys/

We look forward to receiving your feedback on these products.  Please send comments and suggestions to Mike Rifkin at 202-401-6501 or email at mrifkin@acf.hhs.gov.

Sincerely,

Sherri Z. Heller, Ed.D.
Commissioner
Office of Child Support Enforcement

cc: ACF Regional Administrators
      CSE Regional Program Managers