The COVID-19 pandemic has spawned historic levels of fraud in state government unemployment insurance (UI) programs – enabled through combined failures of policy, procedure, management, leadership, and technology. The pandemic fraud-wave has resulted in perhaps the greatest financial debacle in state governance history – wasting as much as $30 billion in California alone. Nationwide on […]

It had to be good news for IT-challenged states when President Biden last week signed the $1.9 trillion COVID stimulus bill that includes a somewhat surprising $2 billion funding award to the Department of Labor (DoL) to help with state unemployment insurance (UI) program improvement. The plan’s UI package was first reported by MeriTalk on […]

It’s hard to refocus on “normal” just as we seem to be finally getting a handle on the COVID pandemic with new vaccinations reaching millions every day across America. But a big regulatory deadline is coming up in October for many individual Americans, and meeting it is going to depend on already over-stressed state IT […]

California los angeles LA

With many states admitting to substantial fraudulent payments due to poor management and problematic unemployment insurance (UI) application systems, what are they doing about fraud in other state programs that collectively make up another giant elephant in the room? While California alone has admitted to processing over $11 billion in fraudulent UI claims in the […]