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It is hard not to get frustrated when we hear that Colorado’s childhood poverty rate is the fastest growing in the nation. About 180K kids statewide live in impoverished homes according to the Colorado Children’s Campaign.

Amazingly, the child poverty rate growth is not necessarily because government assistance is not available. In fact, counties are sitting on over $136 million, as explained by Allison Sherry in the Denver Post. Counties haven’t been creative enough in how to spend the moneys allotted and therefore reserves build up while people are not served. Knowing that there is $136 Million of unspent funds sitting in county coffers causes me to go insane. Crazy, right?

Knowing that there are numerous assistance programs that families qualify for but are not applying for due to difficult and redundant application processes adds additional frustration.

The primary application process is the much maligned CBMS. While officials claim that it is fixed, our sources at county and non-profit offices say differently.

At Efficient Forms we have been quietly working behind the scenes speaking with several counties, state officials, non-profits and local foundations discussing the Colorado Benefits Management System (CBMS) and applications to other need-based programs in the state. Many of the comments I have received from various government officials start out like this:

“Why in the #!&#@ would you want to get involved with fixing CBMS, what with all the bad press…”.

As a local company we care about our state and want to have the rest of the country think highly of Colorado (not just for the skiing). We also care about people and want to do our part to make the lives of children and others better. If we can use our Colorado-based SaaS solutions to do that even better. How many of the resources EDS or Deloitte use to pile up hours and dollars on the state tab actually live in Colorado?

Seamless Compassion

Check out past articles here regarding the CBMS solutions we could quickly deploy in a non-disruptive fashion. Rather then re-hash, I wanted to introduce a new phrase and concept we have been mulling over in the last two weeks, namely “Seamless Compassion.” I will craft another post articulating Seamless Compassion further as we are still roughing out how exactly to deploy and how far to go with the idea…

Seamless Compassion starts with a single citizen-facing portal which can be accessed from any number of state, county, city, non-profit, foundation or other web sites. Similar to the way Turbo Tax® has allowed nearly everyone to complete their own taxes, the Seamless Compassion site allows for citizens to quickly apply for assistance to all programs that an individual qualifies for regardless of whether it is a federal, state, county, local non-profit, or other program.

Bottom line: we want to make it much easier for people to get the assistance they qualify for regardless of the source of assistance, hence Seamless Compassion.

Stay tuned…

In my previous two blog posts regarding CBMS, I have articulated what I perceive to be the issues with CBMS. I have also suggested a solution that can quickly and cost effectively fix a major piece of the CBMS problem - the troubles related to the application process and front end of CBMS. Since the state contends that the back-end decision tables function as designed, fixing the front end may be all that is required, or not?

In two recent articles by Ann Imse in the Rocky Mountain News titled “Glitches take toll on real people” and “State Data Systems Get Some Glue,” Imse discusses many of the issues frustrating counties’ workers as well as people applying for benefits through CBMS. She writes, “For four years, Colorado’s welfare benefits computer system has been plagued with glitches - ones that are more than just an IT headache. The flaws are a throbbing migraine for the real people seeking help from the Colorado Benefits Management System.”

The articles by Imse are just two of the many other articles that have chronicled the problems with CBMS. So you might ask; “Why would any local software solutions provider want to throw their hat into the contentious CBMS ring?”

Well, the answer is simple. Efficient Forms can solve this problem quickly and cost effectively, and it helps people get the benefits they qualify for faster.

With Efficient Benefits Application Solution Service (eBASS) by Efficient Forms, everyone wins, from the state and the counties to the people seeking benefits and those who are not.

Our goal is to have the eBASS deployed this year, but it will take the counties, states and foundations to come together to help us, help them. Several counties and foundations are already interested in giving us a chance. That’s a good place to start.

For more context, read my previous two articles on this subject: Part 1 and Part 2.