Report 2020-128/628.1 Recommendation 5 Responses

Report 2020-128/628.1: Employment Development Department: EDD's Poor Planning and Ineffective Management Left It Unprepared to Assist Californians Unemployed by COVID‑19 Shutdowns (Release Date: January 2021)

Recommendation #5 To: Employment Development Department

To ensure that it does not delay needed improvements to its IT systems, EDD should, by June 2021, identify the elements of the BSM that can assist it in making timely payments and that it can implement incrementally. It should then prioritize implementing the elements most likely to benefit Californians.

The BSM project was paused September 2020. This step was taken to refocus the project, so that inefficiencies could be more fully reviewed to ensure operational challenges identified during the pandemic are not included on a new platform. The EDD began a business process re-engineering effort February 2021 to identify improvements to the policies, administrative procedures and processes to ensure that any new system would incorporate the improvements into the solution. EDD recognizes that continual improvement is needed, and our goal is to continue to leverage and implement solutions that will enhance claims processing and payments. We will implement solutions in an iterative and modular approach and prioritize based on benefits to our constituents.

The following are BSM-related elements that could expedite claim processing and payments. Each identified element includes an impact narrative followed by original reference items that can meet the spirit of the CSA recommendation. Several of the identified BSM elements are in progress, and some have been completed. Many of the elements will be addressed during the EDD's Business Process Re-Engineering (BPR) effort. The BPR effort that EDD is commencing in August 2021 to identify processes that can be improved to create a customer friendly interaction process between the customers and EDD. It will define specific improvements to current processes that can then be automated and streamlined to simplify the customer experience and pay eligible claimants faster. The new or updated processes will then be implemented in the re-imagined BSM project. (see attachment)

California State Auditor's Assessment of Status: Fully Implemented

EDD has identified elements of the BSM that it can implement incrementally, prioritized those elements, including those most likely to result in more timely payments, and developed a timeframe for their implementation.

The Unemployment Insurance Branch (UIB) has assigned a team consisting of former Benefit Systems Modernization (BSM) team members to address the California State Auditor (CSA) recommendation pertaining to BSM elements that could potentially be implemented. The team has reviewed all the functional requirements developed for the BSM project and extracted improvements that would expedite payments and/or benefit claim processing. These improvements are categorized by functional tracks, which is how the BSM project organized the various workloads. The next steps include a review by UIB leadership and a handoff to the Information Technology Branch (ITB) to discuss the priority of functionality and establish an implementation plan to meet the CSA recommendation's intent.

California State Auditor's Assessment of Status: Pending

All Recommendations in 2020-128/628.1

Agency responses received are posted verbatim.