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“If they pick up wages in another state, there is a hold put on the claimants; Send request to ICON & ICON sends request to other state; Really depends on another state; Done by hand, no automation; Takes forever. Because each state has a different process, it causes more delays. Can this process be standardized to flow faster and easier?” --State A
US DOL should launch specific initiatives to co-develop solutions with states to share interstate wage data. Establish a working group that includes states and NASWA to address this. ICON (the current system) digitizes requests between states but does not help with tracking or ensuring a timely response. US DOL should further partner with select states to iteratively build and test shared service components and/or reference implementations that will inform country-wide guidelines for UI system improvements
US DOL should update guidance to enable people to receive benefits from home state first, and make adjustments when the data from other states comes in. Learn more
"[I wish we had a] Joint case management system [across benefits programs]. [State] is very fragmented for someone to get services. We want to use tech more efficiently and effectively." --State A
Our state has “issues knowing if people are receiving other benefits from the state that might make someone ineligible.” --State B
State agency and/or US DOL: If any data needs to be checked with another agency, then make sure that the other entity is prepared for the incoming requests. Ideally, you will be able to establish an expected response time so you could build your surrounding processes accordingly. Digitizing the request to the other agency is important to making sure it doesn’t get lost, but if the other agency’s underlying process is manual, then the digitization won’t have that much impact on timeliness of claimant’s benefit receipt.
Agencies that need to check someone’s military veteran status should build their process around the Veteran Confirmation API, rather than using separate manual processes
Agencies: For any group of people that may need additional or special verification, make sure there is an accessible, mobile-friendly way to upload documents (including image files) to avoid requiring manual/paper process for the population"
US DOL should work with OPM to build an API to verify that someone was a civilian employee and what their last pay grade was
State UI agencies are not set up well to validate wages earned through self-employment because those are definitionally not reported by an employer, which is the standard source of verification for UI systems. To the degree that PUA may persist beyond the pandemic, it’s important to think about improvements to this wage verification system.
"The IRS should be giving us everything, it’s a federal program, this shouldn’t have been with DOL. We don’t have this information, it was shoehorned into us to the detriment of everyone else." --State B
“PUA was a perfect storm of good intentions and bad policy. [...] Are you trying to break our system?” --State C
- “When DOL said you guys aren’t giving the right monetary determinations for these people, you need to start doing this. OK great, can you help us figure out how to do this, what would be your advice on how to do this quickly? We want to be in compliance, but it’s human beings doing math.” --State E
Similar in concept to the recommendation for Challenge 2, state UI and US DOL should work with state and federal treasury and IRS to get this data directly and/or leverage the information already gathered for other benefit programs. While APIs/agreements for working with the IRS almost certainly don’t (yet) exist, states with income taxes should work with their treasury departments to come up with an efficient process to validate wages
US DOL and the executive branch should make and communicate a decision about the future of PUA beyond the pandemic to inform how much state agencies should invest
Unemployment insurance agencies operate under a “threat model” for improper payments of detecting claimants who lie or otherwise make mistakes on their applications and weekly claims. When substantial federal money began flowing into these systems with the CARES Act, the agencies quickly became targets of criminal digital fraud syndicates. These criminal rings have primarily been using stolen identities to claim others’ legitimate benefits or, in the case of Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, to create fully illegitimate claims.
"There have been more data breaches over the last couple of years where accurate information is highly available to folks. In the past, if you have all the right info for someone, our system wasn’t built for stopping you. In most cases, fraud meant that someone was getting unemployment incorrectly - accurate PII out there has made everything more difficult." -- State B
"The problem we had previously was that someone who stole someone’s ID has all their information, they would be able to get past the software, so what we found is that our ID verification was only stopping people who were the right person who couldn’t answer the questions right. We were stopping the wrong people." -- State B
"Right now, there’s been a pretty substantial correction toward making sure that criminal rings can’t come in and file claims on behalf of people." -- State F
Agencies should ensure their threat model is up-to-date: what kind of fraud or theft will your system be susceptible to? (Identity theft to steal others’ benefits, or “benefit theft” to try to get more than you are otherwise eligible for) Agency identity proofing systems shouldn’t rely on Knowledge Based Verification. Look to have a NIST Identity Assurance Level 2 system. To learn more, see USDR’s Identity Proofing for UI Agencies report
In UI systems, there is a balance between finding fraud and getting benefits out in a timely manner. Right now, a lot of fraud is slipping through and benefits are severely delayed. As we work to shift this balance, we need to ensure that we reduce -- not broaden -- racial inequities in UI.
“By focusing on overpayments, the [US DOL] is not held accountable for determining other errors created by the state, or even an employer, when it comes to UI payments—such as underpayments—which are also payment inaccuracies. The [accuracy] map also doesn’t reflect cases in which eligible UI applicants are erroneously denied benefits.” --Unpacking Inequities in Unemployment Insurance
“ID verification, the tools we use have the biggest weight against, have the heaviest burden on, low income people. If the tool is a driver’s license, how much more difficult that becomes for low income people." --State B
"[We have] no way to break down fraud vs. not having a driver’s license. We’ve seen an uptick in phone filing because of this.” -- State B
"These systems, the larger populations get prioritized because you get the biggest result but it’s not the right way to think about things. We are trying to shift and think about smaller populations but more difficult time getting served and get them served with priority "" -- State F
With the support from US DOL, agencies should find and mitigate inequitable impact of identity fraud detection flags like IP address, multiple uses of the same physical address, and restrictions on characters used in people’s names. Learn more
With the support from US DOL, agencies should increase accountability for ensuring rightful claimants make it through the system, like usability testing the entire identity proofing process. The US DOL can set standards and best practices for use. Learn more
US DOL should reevaluate KPIs and their relative importance to ensure timeliness and equity are valued and improved upon.
US DOL should re-release Replacement Rate data in easily accessible format
"With the claimant, because we’ve had so many issues with stolen identities used to file fraudulent claims, when the real claimant goes to file, we have to undo everything that has happened - new username against SSN, if payments got issued, we’ve identified a number of claims beforehand, but some need to be cleaned up so that the payments aren’t charged to the claimant or employer. If the fraudulent claim was issued a debit card, the bank is going to have to cancel that, it’s tied to the SSN. It’s not an easy process, especially with the volumes we’ve been having" --State B
Agencies: when the threat model indicates high likelihood of identity theft as a means to obtain benefits, plan ahead for how the rightful claimant can come in after the criminal and actually receive their benefits without significant delay (even if the stolen benefits haven’t been recouped from the criminal).
Additionally, the states acting independently leaves the slower-acting states vulnerable: As states tighten their fraud detection efforts, criminals move to other parts of the system (State A vs. State B, standard UI rather than PUA, or hacking into accounts to change bank info rather than submitting new applications)
“This has been a failure of imagination at every turn. People have not appreciated the scale and scope of this. We’re getting crucified in the media because of things that are beyond our control. To say this is demoralizing is an understatement.” -- State C
We would be "better served if national requirement and participation in the common data sharing were required" -- State F
"Federal prison data that SSA has and NASWA has been trying to get it and build it into integrity center and they can’t get the data sharing agreement figured out with DOL. We should just solve these so individual states aren’t having to do independent efforts that will contribute to fraud nationally" -- State F
Legislature: The Social Security administration should be given resources and a mandate to make its online, live, SSN validation service available to state agencies both directly and through Login.gov.
US DOL: should set up a “fusion center” to set up and facilitate an ongoing information exchange, so States can learn from each other about what fraud tactics are being used and how to combat them. As part of the project, define the process (and technologies) that people will use to report identity theft, and that the agency will use to act on that information (including law enforcement involvement)
US DOL in partnership with other federal agencies: US DOL should secure the use of the CMS Data Hub to provide a shared eligibility determination service, and as an additional data source for identity validation. This makes the process much more efficient for many who won’t have to manually re-enter information for every new program; however, you’ll have to at the same time ensure that those who aren’t in the partner program still have a pathway to apply. The Missouri Benefits Enrollment Transformation report has many transferrable recommendations, pp 28-29 in particular.
Federal GSA in partnership with US DOL: DOL should pay for Login.gov use for any states that wish to use it, and provide incentives for states to do so
State agencies and US DOL: Programs administered by other agencies may have already done the identity validation you need, or could use the ID proofing that you do. Existing auth systems (e.g., with SNAP or Medicaid)) should be leveraged.
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
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.
US DOL should work with the US Legislature to find more consistent funding sources than large, one-off grants from stimulus packages.
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.
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
Offer to conduct rapid-review sprint to provide recommendations to the state and inform the development of a best practice guide
Open offer to deploy cross-functional USDS teams to states to implement items from the recommendation sprint
Offer to conduct user interviews with state claimants to provide insights to improve the delivery of UI benefits in the state
Offer to provide states with procurement/contract support, including the review of existing contracts and issuance of new contracts
Updated March 14, 2021
In progress
This is a challenge for validating monetary eligibility as well as “situational” eligibility. Whenever someone files a UI claim, the employer who will be charged for the claim must be informed.
Many employers get all information from the agency and can only respond by paper and mail (this is inherently slower than digital processes, and has been exacerbated in the last year by mail delays)
Even for those employers that use more digital tools, they may not get notified of a new claim by a former employee, and so everyone must rely on that person proactively going to the site frequently.
If employers don’t want to challenge the claim, they aren’t required to respond. If they don’t respond within a certain period of time (depending on the state), then the claim is determined to be unchallenged and can proceed. However: several states, including PA and MA, do not have an automated system to move claims to the next step if employers don’t respond. Thus, in times of high volume, claims can get stuck in this step for a very long time.
US DOL should launch a specific initiative with states and NASWA to co-develop solutions to improve and digitize agency interactions with employers
When employers see notification of a claim, there’s a form they use to respond back to the agency. In many states, this was not updated to be able to mark identity theft, which decreased efficiency and/or made it harder for the UI agency to tell what was going on with a particular claim.
"Enhanced wage records - we’re working with the chamber foundation and other groups to come up with standardized wage records not just for unemployment but also many other DOL interests as well. In this pandemic, it’s amazing how many times I hear that their employer submitted information incorrectly. Everything in this situation is bigger than usual, but this is extremely frustrating for us, for me personally, the claimant didn’t do something wrong, it was their employer who has presuming they’ve been doing things right all these years but actually been incorrect." --State B
The experience rating system as it stands today influences (and incentivizes) employers to contest a former employee’s claim to unemployment benefits. When an employer challenges a claim, fact-finding is initiated. In this fact-finding, the UI agency must get information from the employer and from the would-be claimant; an expert in state UI law is required to conduct the fact-finding to be able to make a determination. Thus, there is a cost to UI agencies associated with every employer challenge.
This process can be lengthy, with both claimant and employer needing time to be able to respond, sometimes with many documents that the agency expert must wade through. In the case where the claimant is found to be eligible for benefits, this process has simply served to increase the amount of time it took to first payment.
Additionally, employers are at a strategic advantage when it comes to these challenges, in a way that interferes with the principle of ensuring that all eligible claimants should be able to receive benefits. Employers frequently have lawyers or contractors hired specifically for the purpose of making these challenges (Equifax and ADP are major players in this space). In contrast, would-be claimants frequently do not have the resources or knowledge to state their case effectively in contrast. Claimants are unlikely to have the funds to hire a lawyer, and may not know that legal aid organizations could help them (and even if they did know this, the organization might not be able to take their case in a timely manner).
US DOL should recommend to States that their experience rating system incorporate the percent of claims against an employer that are challenged, and of those that are challenged, what percentage of them are decided in the company’s favor, compared against some baseline. That baseline should account for the fact that right now, it is likely that too many claims are being “successfully” challenged (though of course there is always going to be some number of claims found in the employer’s favor). This normalized index of each employer’s experience with the UI appeals process can be incorporated into the scheduling of tax rates for one employer in accordance with the relative experience of other employers.
“How DOL reaches out and the language they use matters. Right now, they only reach out for audits, never see them reach out like NASWA. Having DOL go on NASWA calls will answer a lot of questions. -- State A
“[Regional offices have] a lack of people that ever worked in a state UI agency, and I appreciate their empathy and support; I think a huge percent have never worked on a claim before, have never taken a call about a claim before, they don’t know what we’re talking about, they don’t know the process for a UI claim, they never really had to deal with it until this year." --State B
"They’ve become like auditors full time at workforce and UI. they don’t have time for anything other than making sure paperwork is correct and we’re meeting metrics. They don’t have time for counseling, outside the box thinking" -- State B
“It’s a gamble as a director, do I want to wait for the guidance, or hope I interpret it right? I don’t care where the guidance comes from, I’m not having to go to my governor and say we wasted X Million on doing this the wrong way. It feels like a gamble too often, paying people or waiting to figure out the rules. That’s a bad position all the way around." -- State E
"NASWA has done a good job on trying to share info and played a leadership role. What’s good is they are independent of DOL but also composed of people that have leaders who have worked in states and know what it’s like to be in our seat and be helpful and relieve burden. They’ve invested a lot.” --State F
US DOL should establish a culture of collaboration with states that reframes existing enforcement relationship
Meet with leadership in every state to demonstrate this
Provide air cover to state employees to contribute to new and innovative ways of solving challenges -- but also just to do their jobs
Work with states on new process to issue guidance iteratively and with input from states
Connect states with each other when common problems arise, and work with them to come to solutions.
US DOL should update reporting requirements from states to require the submission of a detailed breakdown and calculation of their backlogs to include reasons for entering manual review queues and the effectiveness of the manual review queues in resolving issues
Ensure states understand/have the technology support they need to report accurately number of individual claimants
Apply best practices (e.g., California report) to develop a national UI dashboard