Kansas just put a new unemployment insurance system to work. How is it performing so far?
Last month, Gov. Laura Kelly hailed Kansas’ newly unveiled unemployment benefits system as a transformative tool for people who find themselves out of work in the state.
Kansas job seekers have complained about persistent problems with the unemployment insurance portal and delayed benefits payments for years.
The previous system relied on antiquated technology, including a mainframe built in 1977. Modernizing it would guard against fraud and improve the user experience for people filing claims and state employees processing them, Kelly said.
The governor told The Star she’s confident the user experience will continue to improve in the weeks and months to come as claimants familiarize themselves with the new portal.
“We just flipped the switch last month, so have there been some hiccups? Yeah, minor, however, and easily remedied,” Kelly said in an interview last week. “I expect that there will continue to be hiccups as you go along implementing such a massive, massive overhaul. But nothing that we haven’t been able to remedy in minutes or hours at the most.”
The Kansas Department of Labor says the primary goal of the new interface is to make the benefits system more intuitive and secure — not to help the state process claims or appeals quicker.
“The new system has not significantly impacted the number of claims processed or payments made,” a KDOL spokesperson Becky Shaffer said.
Putting the system to work
At a job fair in Kansas City last week, a steady stream of unemployed Kansans trickled through the doors of the Wyandotte County Workforce Partnership building for a chance to get face time with potential employers, including Owens Corning, Smithfield Foods and Panasonic, which is set to open its battery plant in De Soto this spring.
Some job seekers in attendance Thursday said the state’s highly touted new unemployment system hasn’t noticeably improved their experience or addressed underlying issues with KDOL’s responsiveness.
“I’ve claimed unemployment in the past. I’ve never had nobody deny it before. This time around, I have,” said James DeHaven of Kansas City, who recently lost his job at the Hallmark Production Center. “I’m going through that, so far I couldn’t tell you if (the system) is better or not. It seems OK. It would be better if I could win.”
Others like James Atherton have already made up their mind about the new portal.
“In a word, ‘disaster,’” said Atherton of Independence, Kansas, who was furloughed from his job at a Boeing supplier two months ago and drove three hours to attend the job fair.
“It’s easy to use the system, but after that, getting the payment, getting notification from them is delayed,” Atherton said.
“Mine was delayed for over a month by some sort of a credential issue. I’ve never had any sort of an identity theft problem, but because they’ve revamped the website, it’s caused identity verification delays.”
KDOL says it sent 9,000 emails to active claimants and employers and mailed 80,000 postcards to employers educating them on how to help people who have questions about the new system.
Navigating delays
Kansas’ unemployment upgrade was deferred for well over a decade. Former Governor Kathleen Sebelius’ efforts to modernize unemployment insurance sputtered out under Sam Brownback, and the system was overwhelmed during the COVID-19 pandemic when the state paid out hundreds of millions of dollars in fraudulent claims.
Kelly said she’s proud that the overhaul was completed on her watch and that new security measures including multi-factor authentication now make the system more difficult for fraudsters to game.
One major change is that returning claimants are required to create a new account for the updated portal, which has confused some people trying to access documents connected to their old username and password.
“Even if you already have in the past filed a claim or you have had an account on the old system, it doesn’t matter. Every single person must get a new account on the new system,” said Keely Schneider, executive director for Workforce Partnership, the local workforce development board for Johnson, Wyandotte and Leavenworth counties.
“You try to call them, which is really difficult. You can stand waiting on the phone for hours and hours to try to get a human being on the phone. Or you try to make your way through the online system, which is really the preferred way.”
The new website promises users that an “unemployment virtual assistant” chatbot sporting aviator goggles and nicknamed Amelia will soon be available to help answer their questions.
Shaffer, the KDOL spokesperson, said the agency is committed to resolving user concerns quickly.
“While the migration process has presented some challenges, our team is actively addressing these issues to ensure a seamless experience for all users,” she said.
Further improvements
Michael Joshi, a Lenexa-based attorney who specializes in unemployment law, said Kansas’ rules are still “not very friendly” to claimants who want to appeal denied checks.
“You only have sixteen days to appeal a notice of determination or a hearing from a telephone decision or even appeal in the district court,” Joshi said. “They have this stupid process where you have to call in and register in order to participate in the telephone hearing, and if people don’t call in and register then it’s treated as a non-appearance and they never get their day in court.”
Missouri, which also recently overhauled its unemployment insurance system, automatically sends out a notice for appeals hearings with a toll-free number for claimants to call.
If Kansas were to do the same, it would go a long way towards improving the user experience for people trying to navigate the complicated bureaucratic process to receive benefits payments, Joshi said.
Rep. Stephanie Clayton, an Overland Park Democrat and member of the Unemployment Compensation Modernization and Improvement Council, said there’s still ample opportunity to make benefits more accessible.
The algorithm used to determine how often claimants must apply to jobs to qualify for benefits can be glitchy and imprecise, Clayton said. One of her constituents, an out-of-work IT professional, was instructed to apply for farming jobs, she said.
“People that have lost their jobs and are trying to search for jobs in a terrible market are being penalized further and denied the unemployment that they are entitled to because they paid into the system, all because of some arbitrary legislators that determine that if you’re unemployed, you’re lazy and you’re mooching off of the system,” Clayton said.
Rep. Susan Estes, a Wichita Republican and fellow member of the unemployment council, said she remains supportive of the enhanced job search requirements adopted in 2021.
“We’ve tried some new policies. I see some benefit to them, and I think we need to continue to monitor to make sure that people are looking actively (for jobs),” Estes said.
She said the complaints she gets most often about the unemployment system come back to customer service.
“The wait times on phone calls are way too long.”
