BY: ANNA KAMINSKI
Kansas Reflector
TOPEKA — After years of fraud, delayed claims and long waits, Kansas’ beleaguered unemployment program has rolled out a new, modernized system.
Gov. Laura Kelly and Kansas Department of Labor secretary Amber Shultz announced Friday the launch of the online claim system that has been three years in the making, and more than a decade overdue.
Kelly called it a “complete transformation.”
“Now we’ve unlocked access to a world of new possibilities,” Kelly said. “Modernizing an IT system is about more than just updating old software. It’s about rethinking the entire infrastructure.”
The old system was “slow, inefficient and, frankly, unresponsive, especially when Kansas needed it most,” Kelly told reporters and labor department staff.
Kansas’ aging unemployment system crumbled under the weight of a historic number of unemployment claims filed during the COVID-19 pandemic, of which an estimated hundreds of millions of dollars worth were deemed fraudulent.
Officials admitted the system should have been updated years ago.
In 2011, former Gov. Sam Brownback’s administration halted efforts to revamp the system. Kelly had planned to upgrade the 1970s-era mainframe system before the pandemic, but the process didn’t begin until June 2022.
Kelly referenced floppy disks, the Beatles and the Vietnam War when characterizing the time in which the system came to be. Roughly 50 years later, transforming the system was like turning a rotary phone into a smartphone, she said.
Kelly said the overhaul cost more than $40 million, but it would have cost about $27 million if done a decade ago. Continued investment in technology is important, Kelly said, “so we never fall behind the mark again.”
Shultz, who took over as department secretary in 2021, became emotional while thanking the labor department staff members. The “dark days” of the pandemic, as Kelly dubbed them, involved death threats and law enforcement protection for labor department staff.
“They came into a burning building during the pandemic,” she said.
A September 2021 state audit found that about 59% of the roughly 1 million unique claims filed during the pandemic were suspected to be fraudulent. That same audit showed the state processed $700 million in fraudulent benefit payments. Half came from federal funds and half from state funds.
A backlog of fraudulent claims still exists, Shultz told the Reflector. However, the department believes every case of fraud has been identified.
The new system, accessible at KansasUI.gov, was launched earlier this week. Some users encountered hiccups with the system’s multi-factor authentication, a process that is meant to add an extra layer of security, but Shultz said those affected have been contacted.
With the new system’s launch, claim filings are at normal levels, Shultz said. Typically, seasonal layoffs bring in about 1,200 initial claims this time of year, while continued claims are at about 7,500. As the new system’s first week comes to a close, volumes remain normal, Shultz said.