Frequently Asked Questions
General
Do Not Pay (DNP) is a service that agencies can use at no cost to check many data sources at one time to verify a recipient's eligibility for payment.
DNP is NOT a list of entities or people who should not be paid.
Because it provides one-stop access to many ways to check eligibility, DNP benefits any federal agency that enters into a financial transaction with a person or entity.
DNP also benefits us all by helping to ensure the integrity of our nation's payment processes.
DNP is committed to providing:
- Quality data
- More and better quality data
- Continuous system development
- Cutting edge data analytics
- Customized agency outreach
On June 18, 2010 the Office of the President issued an Executive Memorandum directing agencies to check a series of data sources prior to issuing a payment or award. Additionally, the memo called for the creation of a single point of entry to access these databases. The U.S. Department of the Treasury was directed by the Office of Management and Budget to take the lead in developing the single point of entry, or DNP. The Payment Integrity Information Act of 2019 (PIIA) is the current legislation that governs DNP.
The Payment and Integrity Information Act of 2019 and subsequent memoranda and circulars require agencies to use the Treasury Working Systems to review payments in order to verify eligibility to reduce improper payments. This legislation also mandates states to access and use Do Not Pay services for federally funded, state administered programs.
Simply stated, the overall goal for the DNP initiative is two-fold: to help agencies achieve the Administration's goal of reducing improper payments while safeguarding the privacy of individuals.
DNP will help reduce the number of improper payments by providing agencies streamlined access to relevant data sources when evaluating pre-award, pre-payment eligibility verification process as well as anytime during the payment lifecycle.
Yes, states with federally funded, state administered programs have access to DNP services to reduce improper payments. Only third-party entities cannot have access to DNP.
Improper Payments
The Payment Integrity and Information Act of 2019 defines an improper payment as:
- means any payment that should not have been made or that was made in an incorrect amount, including an overpayment or underpayment, under a statutory, contractual, administrative, or other legally applicable requirement; and
- include —
- any payment to an ineligible recipient;
- any payment for an ineligible good or service;
- any duplicate payment;
- any payment for a good or service not received, except for those payments where authorized by law; and
- any payment that does not account for credit for applicable discounts.
Improper payments can happen for a number of reasons. It is important to identify the root causes of improper payments in order for agencies to detect and prevent improper payments. DNP can help agencies identify some of the reasons improper payments are made.
While improper payments can have many causes, the federal government has categorized root causes of error into five categories for reporting purposes. This chart from the Office of Management and Budget’s M-21-19 Memorandum defines and gives examples of each cause category:
| Cause Category | Definition | Examples include but are not limited to… |
|---|---|---|
| Statutory Requirements of Program Were Not Met | An exception in that a payment made to an otherwise qualified recipient for the right amount but the payment process failed to meet all regulatory and/or statutory requirements. All Technically IPs will fall into this cause category. | when a vendor is paid the contracted amount for services provided; however, the person authorizing the services did not have the legal authority needed from the contracting officer to authorize the services, or, when a vendor is paid the correct amount for services provided but the contract the agency used to secure the services did not meet all of the requirements in the Federal Acquisition Regulation. |
| Unable to Determine whether Proper or Improper | A payment that could be either proper or improper but the agency is unable to determine whether the payment was proper or improper as a result of insufficient or lack of documentation. All Ups will fall into this cause category. | when an agency is required to verify income prior to issuing a payment to a beneficiary and a beneficiary’s case file lacks updated income information or pay stubs and the agency has no other way of verifying whether a change in income has occurred since the last time they issued a benefit. The beneficiary may still be qualified to receive benefits, but they might have also had an increase or decrease in income affecting their eligibility for the program. Therefore, because the reviewer does not have the information needed (updated income) during the time of the review, it is unknown whether an overpayment or underpayment has been made. |
| Data/Information Needed Does Not Exist | A situation in which there is no known database, dataset or location currently in existence that contains the data/information needed to validate the payment accuracy prior to making the payment. | when a recipient’s eligibility is dependent on the length of time a child spent with their guardian – no database or dataset is currently in existence containing this type of information; when a medical provider fails to provide proof of a broken leg (required by statute or regulation) to support a claim – no database or location is currently in existence containing x-rays or any other type of information that can confirm a leg is actually broken. |
| Inability to Access Data/Information | A situation in which the data or information needed to validate payment accuracy exists but the agency or entity making the payment does not have access to it. | when a statutory constraint prevents a program from being able to access information that would help prevent IPs (for example, not confirming a recipient’s earnings or work status through existing databases due to statutory constraints, or a beneficiary failing to provide an agency with information on earnings, and the agency does not have access to databases containing the earnings information). |
| Failure to Access Data/Information | IPs are attributed to human errors to access the appropriate data/information to determine whether or not a beneficiary or recipient should be receiving a payment, even though such data/information exists and is accessible to the agency or entity making the payment. | when agency with access to the death master file fails to verify eligibility prior to approving entitlements; when an entity has access to the information that would verify a beneficiaries household income and the entity making the payment does not check that information prior to payment. |
As a multi-functional analytics tool and one-stop data shop, DNP allows agencies to check various data sources for pre-award, pre-payment eligibility verification, at the time of payment and any time in the payment lifecycle. It allows them to verify eligibility of a vendor, grantee, loan recipient, or beneficiary. This will help prevent, reduce, and stop improper payments, as well as prevent fraud, waste, and abuse.
Using Do Not Pay
An agency can begin by filling out the form on the Getting Started page.
If you have any questions or have trouble logging into the Portal with your PIV/CAC/LincPass cards, contact the DNP Agency Support Center at 855-837-4391, or by e-mail at OPI.outreach@fiscal.treasury.gov.
For assistance with creating or maintaining your Login.gov account, please access the Login.gov Help Center (https://login.gov/help/).
For assistance with creating or maintaining your ID.me account, please access the ID.me Help Center (https://help.id.me/hc/en-us).
Yes, you may use an existing account with Login.gov or ID.me. If you have an existing account that contains your personal e-mail address, you must also add your work e-mail address to your profile. An ID.me account must contain your official work e-mail address as the primary e-mail address.
Access to the DNP Portal is provisioned to official work e-mail addresses only, not personal e-mail addresses. The official work e-mail address on your existing account with Login.gov or ID.me must match the e-mail address provided to DNP on the User Enrollment Form.
No. You are required to create an account with either Login.gov or ID.me.
If you have authenticated your identity through the CSP of your choice, your access to the DNP Portal should be immediately available through your new Login.gov or ID.me account.
Yes. If a user does not log in once every 120 days, the Aging Rules will deactivate the user, revoking DNP Portal access immediately.
If a user is deactivated, a new DNP User Enrollment Form must be completed and signed by the Access Group Administrator (AGA) for the user to regain access to the DNP Portal. The process to reprovision access can take up to seven days.
Set a recurring reminder on your calendar to log in to the Portal every 90 - 100 days to avoid Portal disruption after 120 days of no login activity.
In order to conduct an online search, an individual would enter one of the following combinations of search criteria.
- Social Security Number (SSN) or Employer Identification Number (EIN) or Taxpayer Identification Number (TIN)
- SSN/EIN/TIN and Last Name
- SSN/EIN/TIN and Last Name and First Name
- Last Name and First Name
- Business Name or Doing Business As
- SSN/EIN/TIN and Business Name
- Business Name and Unique Entity Identifier (UEI) and Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) Indicator
- Business Name and UEI
- UEI
- EFT Indicator
No, DNP will provide users with a summary of matches and the name of the data source where they were found. This information is intended to assist the agencies in determining payment eligibility based on the agency's internal policies and business processes. While DNP will not tell an agency whether or not to make a payment, it may help them identify anomalies and potential problems.
Watch the How to Adjudicate in the Portal video.
Online Search capabilities allow for searching a single name or entity. A Computer Matching Agreement (CMA) is not needed to match against Privacy Act protected (a.k.a. Restricted) data sources for searching a single name or entity.
Batch Matching allows a comparison of an agency’s pre-award and pre-payment file; DNP matches files to available approved data sources and returns the results in the portal.
Continuous Monitoring allows an ongoing comparison of an agency’s file against all data sources they are authorized to access. For example, an agency may supply a file to DNP that will be compared to certain data sources any time the data sources are refreshed. This eliminates the need to repeatedly send in the same file to DNP and allows an agency to have the most up-to-date matches against their file. Any time the data source or agency file is updated, a comparison is made and the results are available in the portal. Please note: A CMA may be needed to match against Privacy Act protected (a.k.a. restricted) data sources using batch matching or continuous monitoring functionality.
A Computer Matching Agreement (CMA) is a written agreement that establishes the conditions, safeguards, and procedures under which a federal agency agrees to disclose data where there is a computerized comparison of two or more automated System of Records (SORs).
The Privacy Act of 1974 requires that federal agencies enter into computer matching agreements when (with some exceptions) an agency intends to conduct a computerized comparison of two or more automated federal systems of records.
The purpose of the computerized comparison is to establish or verify the eligibility of, or continue compliance with statutory and regulatory requirements by:
- applicants for,
- recipients or beneficiaries of,
- participants in, or
- providers of services with respect to:
cash or in-kind assistance or payments under federal benefit programs.
When you use Online Search, Batch Matching or Continuous Monitoring capabilities, a search will be performed on all the data sources to which you have been given access. In the Online Search functionality, you are able to uncheck the boxes for the data sources you are authorized to use and select only the ones you want to use for that particular search.
Data sources are updated in different intervals depending on how often the data source agency updates their files.
In the list of data sources on the DNP Portal landing page, you can hover your cursor over a data source to produce a popup with the update frequency information.
In the context of DNP, the term Public and Restricted does not distinguish between government and commercially owned data sources.
Public data sources are those available to members of the public via websites or other non-restricted means. Restricted data sources are not available to the public and house data sources that are protected by the Privacy Act.
Privacy Act protected systems are characterized by those records under the control of any agency from which information is retrieved by a unique identifier (e.g., name, symbol, identifying particular assigned to an individual). Commercial data sources are not covered by the Privacy Act. Please see Data Sources for further details and how these terms are applied to the Death Master File, which maintains death data that is not protected by the Privacy Act.
View the Data Correction Process.
DNP's Application Programming Interface, or API, integrates DNP data within your own systems to create greater efficiencies. DNP can help you establish an API that is customized to your needs. Contact your Agency Lead or Agency Specialist for more information.
DNP welcomes all comments and suggestions. Please send them to OPI.outreach@fiscal.treasury.gov.