Unemployment Insurance Modernization
  • Introduction
  • What we're reading
    • Language Access Resources
    • Tracking implemented solutions
  • Language Access Resources
    • USDR Language Access Support
    • AI Translation Assistants for Unemployment Insurance Benefits
    • Spanish Translation Guide for Unemployment Insurance
      • Using This Guide
      • Writing Inclusive Spanish
      • Writing Plain Spanish
        • Guidance For Word Choice
        • Guidance For Sentence Structure
        • Spanish Grammar Conventions
      • Designing Reader-Friendly Content for Spanish Speakers
      • Final Notes
      • USDR Language Access Support
      • Links to Resources
      • Spanish Translation Guide Changelog
  • Plain Spanish Glossary of Unemployment Insurance Terms
  • Multilingual Retroactive PUA Eligibility Resources for State Workforce Agencies
    • (English) Retroactive PUA – Claimant Communications
    • (Spanish) Retroactive PUA – Claimant Communications
    • (English) Retroactive PUA – Fact-finding content
    • (Spanish) Retroactive PUA – Fact-finding content
    • Retroactive PUA – Fact-finding form design
  • Unemployment Insurance Fraud Reporting
    • Unemployment Insurance Fraud Reporting Tool Kit
  • Identity proofing for UI agencies
    • Identity proofing introduction
    • Race and inequity in identity proofing methods
      • Background
      • Recommendation 1: Find and mitigate inequitable impact of identity fraud detection flags
      • Recommendation 2: Increase accountability for ensuring rightful claimants make it through the system
      • References and thanks
    • What is identity proofing?
    • Commercial uses of identity proofing
    • Process of identity proofing
      • Identity resolution
      • Identity validation
      • Identity verification
    • User experience of identity proofing
    • Identity proofing vendor comparison
      • Vendor analysis
      • Summary of vendor offerings
      • Deep dive: pricing
      • Deep dive: platform “bundling”
      • Deep dive: handling Social Security numbers
      • Deep dive: document verification
      • What’s next?
    • Appendix I: Vendor evaluation of key considerations
    • Appendix II: Vendor Evaluation of Supplemental Considerations
  • Additional Deep Dives
    • Effective Communication with UI Claimants Through a Standalone Case Management System
    • Sample Communications
    • Customer support mechanisms for UI agencies
      • Improved UX reduces inequity
      • Online appointment scheduling
        • Agency’s current solution
        • Other states’ solutions
        • Solution space
        • Deep dive: vendor “types”
        • Deep dive: pricing
        • Recommendations by category
      • Chatbots
        • Methodology
        • Types of online chat
        • Live chat
        • Free-text chat
        • Prompted chat
        • Support chat
        • Requirements
        • Best practices
        • Known results
    • Employer Interactions with Unemployment Insurance Systems
      • Landscape of the Employer Experience: User Interviews
        • Methodology
        • Key Takeaways
      • Employer Experience: Digital Interactions
        • Methodology & Note on Language
        • Key Takeaways
  • UI Journey Map & Recommendations
    • Introduction
      • The Journey Map
      • Methods & Acknowledgements
    • The Claimant Journey
      • Know what I'm eligible for
      • Submit my information
      • Certify Weekly
      • Receive Payment
      • Know my claim status
      • Receive Help
    • The Agency Journey
      • Validate Identity
      • Validate Monetary Eligibility
      • Interacting with Employers
      • Fact Finding
      • Update systems for new programs
      • Relationship with US DOL
    • The Employer Journey
  • Getting started with data
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  • Challenge: Existing systems are fragile to begin with, and making changes for the new programs is difficult
  • What our partners are saying
  • Recommendations

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  1. UI Journey Map & Recommendations
  2. The Agency Journey

Update systems for new programs

Challenge: Existing systems are fragile to begin with, and making changes for the new programs is difficult

What our partners are saying

  • We have "daily ‘Severity Level 1’ incidents in IT, because our infrastructure has a hard time keeping up." --State C

  • “The challenge is, the law passes, the president doesn’t sign it, then he signs it, but what people hear is that there’ll be $300 more in your account tomorrow. And that’s not how it works, we have to reprogram everything." --State D

  • “Normally in a business you’d have two versions of this program so you could make updates to the program on the one while being live on the other - we can’t switch over like that. We can only take pieces offline, we’ve been trying to do a security update, and we try to put it in, and something else goes wrong, we have to back it out, take our whole system offline for half of a saturday every week.” --State D

  • “Right now is the best the mainframe is ever going to be"" 5 minutes from now it may be worse. [...] My claims agents work from a green screen, like Oregon Trail. It’s Oregon trail every single day." --State E

  • “We tried to move quickly and the changes aren’t embedded or tested as they should be in normal times cause you need to get them out.” --State F

Recommendations

  1. US DOL should provide guidance on what it means to modernize the system based on solving agency and constituent problems, not just on the need to get off mainframes and migrating data. Funding for modernization should be incentivized to get states to use modular contracting and agile software development.

  2. US DOL should work with the US Legislature to find more consistent funding sources than large, one-off grants from stimulus packages.

  3. US DOL should establish a USDS team reporting to senior leadership that exists independently of the areas responsible for audit and enforcement to work with states to build a “no-blame” environment of trust and address urgent pandemic issues - including conducting discovery, enabling sharing of concerns, and creating a forum to get feedback on potential actions by the federal government.

    1. Use deployed cross-functional USDS teams that establish good working relationship with states to iteratively transition from ‘rapid response’ to ‘modernization’ at the right time/pace so that shared services can be built and deployed together with states

    2. Offer to conduct rapid-review sprint to provide recommendations to the state and inform the development of a best practice guide

    3. Open offer to deploy cross-functional USDS teams to states to implement items from the recommendation sprint

    4. Offer to conduct user interviews with state claimants to provide insights to improve the delivery of UI benefits in the state

    5. Offer to provide states with procurement/contract support, including the review of existing contracts and issuance of new contracts

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Last updated 4 years ago

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