State Auditor Elaine Howle this week issued a report on the Employment Development Department’s performance which ranks 41st among all states to pay claims and serve the unemployed. Among other critical factors, the report says EDD has missed opportunities to improve performance because of how its multiple IT projects have been prioritized or delayed.
“[w]e have been working very hard to implement a very large suite of automation projects to enhance our services at such a difficult time for the economy and our California workers,” said spokesperson Loree Levy, who noted that the department has had to deal with unprecedented workloads, high unemployment and numerous benefit extensions over the past four years. “[t]he EDD has continued to show improvement in service levels while paying out over $40 billion in extended benefits in addition to regular state provided UI benefits, a workload that did not exist prior to 2008,” she said via email.
The audit was also critical of the department for not using certain data, performance metrics and problems with the public navigating its new phone system.
“We provided several examples where this data was utilized to implement program improvements, such as improvements in call routing, and the recently-implemented automated wrap up and transfer process for claim filing, but it is too early to provide feedback on the outcome of this effort,” said Levy. “We do have additional data available and clearly recognize the value of using this data, but because we are in the process of replacing our continued claims system and doing a major upgrade to the ‘EDD Tele-Cert’ (telephone continued claims) system, we are unable to make additional changes to our telephone system until that project is complete. Any changes at this point will result in costly delays to this major automation effort.”
According to the audit report, in the quarter ending June 30, 2012, the department made 78 percent of its first payments within 14 days allowed under federal requirements. The federal labor department says 87 percent is acceptable. Although performance is up from 72 percent reported two years ago.
From the letter report:
The department asserted during our 2011 report that its long-term IT projects and system application upgrades would have the greatest impact on its ability to perform at a level that the federal labor department considers acceptable, particularly for making timely first payments.
However, as Table 2 on the following page indicates, the department still has not fully implemented certain of these key corrective actions. Specifically, because of the way the department has prioritized its multiple IT projects, in October 2010 it suspended the project to expand the types of claims it can process through web-based eApply4UI and, according to the department’s program analysis and evaluation section chief (analysis section chief), it has no current plan to resume that project. In addition, the department delayed implementing the Continued Claims Redesign Project by about one year because other projects took precedence; however, it plans to implement that project in March 2013. Additionally, the department initiated another IT project—the California Training Benefits Streamline Process—but it has not implemented the process statewide. According to the department, prioritizing IT projects was largely due to the demand for IT resources resulting from the department’s entire portfolio of IT projects. Nevertheless, delaying these projects hinders the department’s ability to further improve its performance so that it can meet federal timeliness measures.
Read the entire report here.
From the report, Table 2 referenced above:
Source: Bureau of State Audits Report 2012-501
Employment Development Department:
Its Unemployment Insurance Program is Still Failing to Meet Acceptable Federal Performance Measures and Its Corrective Actions Have Fallen Short
Click to enlarge
