Three decades. That’s not a career milestone — it’s a body of work.
Nagaraj Garimalla, president and CEO of Protech Solutions, Inc., marked 30 years with the Little Rock, Arkansas-based firm in 2025. And while anniversaries tend to invite reflection, the Protech team didn’t spend much time looking backward. The map in front of them was too interesting.
In September 2025, the National Council of Child Support Directors (NCCSD) Systems and Data Committee and the Office of Child Support Services (OCSS) presented something that stopped the room: a national map tracking every state’s progress on child support system modernization. Color-coded, state by state, it told the story of where America stands on one of its quieter infrastructure crises.
The picture was mixed. Some states have opted for full replacements — ripping out legacy systems and starting fresh. Others are taking the slower road: incremental updates, replatforming efforts, targeted refactoring. A few have gone hybrid, replacing the most broken components while nudging everything else forward. Different timelines, different budgets, different political appetites for change.
But the underlying message? Unmistakable. Legacy child support platforms are a problem, and state governments across the country know it.
Here’s what that means in practice. These aren’t abstract IT projects. Child support systems determine whether payments get processed on time, whether caseworkers have the tools to do their jobs, and whether families — often the most financially vulnerable in their states — get what they’re owed. When systems fail, real people fall through the cracks.
That’s the work Protech Solutions has been doing for 30 years.
The NCCSD and OCSS map also tracked which states had successfully certified modern child support systems — and when. Protech’s work was reflected in several of the certified systems.. Nevada became the most recent state to certify using Protech technology, hitting that benchmark in 2025. Before that: New Hampshire, Florida, New Jersey, and — through collaborations with Conduent — Delaware and South Carolina.
Garimalla and the broader Protech team were candid about their pride in those results, particularly for New Hampshire, New Jersey, South Carolina, Delaware, and Nevada. Those states moved through certification with fewer complications than most. That’s not luck — it’s what 30 years of experience in child support infrastructure actually looks like when it’s deployed well. Credit goes to the Protech team and, just as much, to the state leaders willing to modernize rather than patch.
Certification isn’t just a compliance checkbox. For Protech, it represents a state now equipped to serve struggling families with speed and accuracy — two things legacy systems routinely couldn’t deliver.
The catch? Much of the country still isn’t there yet.
North Carolina, the Dakotas, Washington State, and Puerto Rico are still in early modernization phases. These are the governments Protech is most focused on reaching next — not because the work is easy, but because the need is urgent and the organization has a 30-year track record of getting it done right.
The goal isn’t just certification. It’s building systems sturdy enough to support children and families for generations — long after the anniversary celebrations are over.
