S.C. Only State Without Child Support Computer System

South Carolina is the only state in the nation that doesn't have a statewide child support enforcement computer system, required by federal law, and has been fined more than $100 million because of that. Now, that system has been delayed again after the state ended the contract with the company it hired to build the system.

Congress passed a law in 1988 requiring states to develop statewide child support enforcement systems, to make it faster and easier for parents to get court-ordered child support. South Carolina had a deadline of 1997 to get its up and running, but missed that deadline after the company it hired didn't get the job done.

That led to a court case over the contract, which delayed the system even more. Meanwhile, the federal government was fining the state millions of dollars for not following the law. So far, the state has been fined more than $104 million.

Hewlett Packard started working on the system in 2007. But Marc Manos, an attorney for the state Department of Social Services, says the state just terminated its contract with HP because it missed testing deadlines and the system was not going to be ready by its September 18^th launch date.

Manos says the state does not have to start over from scratch; it will finish what HP started. But with the change, it's too soon to know how long it will take to finish the system.

Bill Ritz, spokesman for Hewlett Packard, confirms that the state terminated the contract on July 10.

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