Good Morning!
I was wondering if any Tribes had issues with their contract on Maintenance of Tribal System? We are trying to get OCSE to pay for maintenance and they want this language in the contract. I’m worried about the language “OCSE access to the agency’s system in all of it aspects”. Has any tribe experience OCSE wanting to see the system and accessing the tribal data?
vii. ACCESS TO SYSTEM AND RECORDS: The Tribe will allow the Federal Office of Child
Support Enforcement (OCSE) access to the agency’s system in all of its aspects, including
installation, operation, and cost records of contractors and subcontractors, and of Service
Agreements at such intervals as are deemed necessary by OCSE to determine whether the
conditions for approval are being met and to determine the efficiency, effectiveness, reasonableness
of the system and its cost pursuant to 45 CFR Part 75.329, §75.361, §310.40 and §95.615.
10 Responses
Our program uses a section of our tribal wide system RiteTrack, and we had to provide a copy of the entire contract, and a copy of the child support specific section design documents. I was asked to submit the design document first for the OSCE systems people to review before we started adding our case files into the system. But then last year when I went to include it as a Match for our Budget (our tribe is paying the Maintenance) then I was asked to include the Contract. I included both with this years application, still as Match. I haven’t had any questions on it yet. I would think since our tribe is using RiteTrack for multiple programs, they would have a problem with the “agency’s system in all of it’s aspects” as being included. I could see if we could argue that down to the Child Support section being the only part of the “agency” (meaning YCSS) system, but the way RiteTrack operates as person based – we basically see all individuals input into the system, but with certain sections not visible to us, as is our section is not visible to other users. So that’s all tribal member and customer PII, whether they have an “agency”/child support case or not.
Our contract for CIS has that exact language in it.
We are having contract “language” issues with our LabCorp contract. Apparently, OCSE has several contracts with this language in it, however, my LabCorp contact does not fully understand what is needed. Anyone else having issues with their contracts?
Thanks Jennifer this is helpful!
We were required to have that language in our MTS contract.
Hello,
Penobscot Nation had an issue with our contract with Lab Corp as well. They approved the contract but wanted changes added to it as well about the copyright information. They did send us the wording they want added to it.
Thanks Dana, we have also have requested the exact wording that is needed.
We have never put Labcorp in our budget as a contract and has always put it under “other”. Since we don’t have a contract with them and it’s fee for service similar to getting a copy of birth certificates.
I can’t believe OCSE is asking for copyright information in the contracts for Labcorp. This is getting out of hand!
Greetings from Meskwaki Nation in Iowa!! WE ARE SURVIVORS!!
We haven’t had any issues this year with our contracts so far…..
We may have had issues in the early years, but since then have always provided draft contracts/service agreements with the OCSE required language.
It helps tremendously that our IT Maintenance provider, Greg K., works with DSTS to get the contract language approved prior to sending us a draft each year.
LabCorp is considered a service agreement in our plan, so we submit a draft copy of that with the most recent rate card. We have responsive partners/representatives at those agencies/service providers and we also have our Tribe’s legal team review them prior to submission. They usually have recommendations that we forward to the partner/provider for approval, then it comes back. So we are not the only ones who have eyes on the documents.
The process takes time, but it’s worth the effort when I don’t have to answer questions from our Grantors, besides, Jeff Stocks at Region VII is a good federal partner to have too. We are blessed.
Stay Safe & Be Well!