California hiring 5,300 workers, appointing ‘strike team’ to get a handle on unemployment surge

Gov. Gavin Newsom doesn’t expect California to get through a backlog of unemployment insurance claims for two more months despite a push to hire thousands of temporary workers and improve state technology.

Newsom announced new efforts Wednesday aimed at short- and long-term improvements at the Employment Development Department, which has struggled to keep up with a surge of unemployment insurance claims since the coronavirus outbreak arrived in March.

The department has processed 8 million unemployment insurance claims since then and distributed about $49 billion in benefits, according to the release.

Yet nearly 1 million claims that might be eligible for payment are sitting in a backlog. The state’s efforts will focus on eliminating the backlog of those “actionable” claims by the end of September, according to the release.

“There should be no barriers between Californians and the benefits they have earned,” Newsom said in the release. “Unprecedented demand due to job loss during this pandemic paired with an antiquated system have created an unacceptable backlog of claims. Californians deserve better, and these reform efforts aim to move the department in that direction.”

The department is hiring 5,300 temporary employees, according to the release. The state has redirected 1,300 state workers from within EDD and from other departments to help, along with paying consultant Deloitte to augment a call center.

More unemployed Californians will need to certify their claims every two weeks as part of the solution, according to the release. The department, which is the subject of an oversight hearing scheduled for Thursday in the Assembly, plans to expand partnerships with legislators to help communicate with claimants.

Newsom is appointing a “strike team” to look for ways to modernize the department’s decades-old computer systems that state officials have blamed for delays.

Within 45 days, the team is expected to deliver “recommendations and solutions to transform the customer experience of applying for and receiving UI benefits,” according to the release.

The team, which is to be led by Government Operations Agency Secretary Yolanda Richardson and Jennifer Pahlka, a co-founder of the United States Digital Response, faces a monumental IT challenge.

The department’s core unemployment insurance systems use outdated coding systems that are difficult to program for new federal unemployment benefits, and the inflexible system isn’t user-friendly for all the new workers being trained on it.

The state has updated parts of the system in the last decade, but the department is suffering many of the same problems and delays as it did during the Great Recession. California has repeatedly turned to Deloitte Consulting to fix the problems, and pays the contractor millions of dollars per year to maintain and operate the IT systems the consultant built.

The department has been preparing for a major system overhaul for the last four years, and doesn’t expect to complete the overhaul for another four. The project will be the largest of its kind in the country, department representatives have said.

Newsom promised to make improving state technology a priority. He deployed a similar strike team last year to try to improve the customer experience at the Department of Motor Vehicles. The team released a report a year ago that called for more hiring, new ways to prioritize customers and strategies for expanding the department’s reach beyond DMV offices, among other changes.

Assemblyman Jim Patterson, R-Fresno, wasn’t impressed with the DMV strike team’s results, saying they fell short of Newsom’s promised “re-imagining” of the department.

Patterson, who has called for auditing the Employment Development Department, wasn’t holding out much optimism for the new strike team.

“Gov. Newsom has become notorious for his words — not his actions,” Patterson said in a prepared statement. “It’s our responsibility in the Legislature to not only hold the EDD accountable, but the Governor as well. I will continue to do both on behalf of the people of California.”

This story was originally published July 29, 2020 at 5:42 PM.