New ODJFS director right to scrap unworkable system

Nearly a year ago, if Ohio jobseekers tried to use ohioworks.com, the hopelessly extravagant and hopelessly useless website of the Ohio Department of Job and Family Services, they would have given up in frustration and anger. At the time, The Vindicator called on Gov. Bob Taft to make ODJFS officials accountable for their utter incompetence -- not only in workforce development but in family services as well. It has cost the state -- and its taxpayers -- a fortune in time and in money, but at last it looks as if the agency has a permanent director who actually knows what he's doing.
When Taft merged the Ohio Bureau of Employment Services with the Ohio Department of Human Services, Ohioans were assured that the new department of job and family services would be a model of efficiency and service. Instead, what emerged was a template for waste and inefficiency, what with unbid multi-million dollar contracts, the illegal withholding of $38 million in child support and state income tax refunds from former welfare recipients and a job service program in a shambles. Particularly galling was the $60 million spent on a poorly designed and implemented job-matching system that was almost impossible to use.
After one director resigned and another was fired, Taft asked former House Speaker Jo Ann Davidson and Greg Moody, his executive assistant for health and human services, to serve as interim directors and get the agency back on track. In May, Tom Hayes, a former Cuyahoga County administrator, was named to the position.
Hayes has only been on the job since Sept. 4, but already fresh air is breezing through ODJFS corridors.
People-centered philosopy: As Melissa DeLisio, ODJFS assistant director overseeing services to employers, explains, a new philosophy governs the department. She told The Vindicator, "There's a recognition that every service a customer needs can't be provided by technology, that automated systems can't replace face-to-face services." Under the new plan, computers will be used when they provide for the greatest efficiency and sensible use of department resources.
But that technology won't be the $60 million Ohio Works boondoggle, due to be shut down on Dec. 27, but for a while anyway, the department will use the old $17 million Bureau of Employment Services system that predated Ohio Works. It will cost about $500,000 to bring it into federal compliance and will serve as a bridge to the more comprehensive system the state expects to develop: using staff experts not over-priced consultants.
In a time of economic recession, when increasing numbers of Ohioans are losing their jobs, and families find their resources stretched to the breaking point, it's a welcome relief to see ODJFS in competent hands.