State officials have put on hold a controversial call-in system for Texans to apply for food stamps and Medicaid, Health and Human Services Executive Commissioner Albert Hawkins announced Wednesday.

Hawkins is calling for better training for the system's private-sector customer service representatives and improvements in how data from applications are tracked. Officials will re-evaluate the system's readiness in 30 days, to ensure that call center employees are better able to resolve complicated cases, he said.

"We need to ensure we're providing a high quality of services to the person that seeks . . . benefits from the state," Hawkins said. "I did not believe we were satisfying that standard, that expectation, at this point."

Legislators and advocates for low-income Texans had pressured state officials to delay the rollout of what they called a hard-to-navigate system that was plagued by long hold times and staffed by people who couldn't answer questions. About 6,000 Texas children in the Children's Health Insurance Program had to be reinstated in February because families hadn't been told about a new enrollment fee.

The new system, which has been in a pilot phase in Travis and Hays counties since January, was scheduled to expand to more than 20 Hill Country counties this month and to reach the entire state by the end of the year. It calls for closing some state offices where people apply for public assistance but expands the ways people can sign up for benefits; they would be able to apply by phone, mail, Internet or fax.

The delay does not affect the pilot program in Travis and Hays counties.

But it is likely to affect state officials' projected cost savings of $646 million over five years, although Hawkins couldn't say by how much. Texas is paying $899 million over five years for the system to the Texas Access Alliance, a private consortium anchored by Accenture LLP.

State Rep. Eddie Rodriguez, D-Austin, had called for the state to slow the rollout.

"People aren't getting the services they need," he said. "They're not getting a lot of help, they're getting bounced around, their questions are not being answered at all or they're being given wrong information." But news of the delay was disappointing to Mary Katherine Stout, health policy analyst for the Texas Public Policy Foundation, an Austin-based research institute that advocates limited government.

"It's very important that a temporary delay not turn into a reversal of policy," she said. "Many people are already making use of some of these more convenient ways to apply for benefits. We know that this is much more efficient."

Since January, the Texas Access Alliance has processed more than 14,000 applications and answered 76,000 calls, state officials said. And Texans have submitted more than 2,000 applications through the Internet.

Texas Access Alliance Executive Director Dave McCurley issued an e-mail statement late Wednesday: "We understand and agree with the state's decision."

The Texas State Employees Union called for state officials to postpone laying off state workers. Some 2,900 state workers were told in the October that they will not have jobs in the public benefits eligibility system after May, and many have already left, replaced by temporary workers.

"They face an all-out, complete meltdown of their system," union Vice President Mike Gross said.

The delay was welcome news to food stamp recipient Jake Billingsley, 57, of Austin, one of 3 million Texans on public assistance. Despite meeting the application deadline for renewing his food stamps, his benefits arrived late this month, he said.

"The system's got a lot of kinks in it," said Billingsley, who is unable to hold a full-time job because of a disability. "It's better to get those worked out rather than just totally upset the boat."

Billingsley worries that other Texans on food stamps may not have the backyard resources he does: "I'm fortunate that I'm a gardener and grow a lot of my own fresh vegetables," he said.