PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Pennsylvania has launched a long-awaited overhaul of its unemployment compensation system. The new public website is now live, though users encountered some hiccups during the transition on Tuesday morning.
Labor and Industry Acting Secretary Jennifer Berrier said they were expecting some issues at launch. But overall, she said the new system is performing as they hoped it would.
“The same number of people who have accessed the new system within the past 12 hours exceeds the number of people who would have accessed the mainframe in an entire week pre-pandemic," said Berrier.
She said that as of 1 p.m., more than 62,000 users filed for claims in the first 10 hours the site was up and running.
But the new system has had his hiccups, with hundreds of complaints on Labor and Industry’s social media.
The department says some users had trouble logging in, and they were working on a fix.
Still others had "debit card" listed as their payment type, even though they are enrolled in direct deposit. Officials say it is only a display issue, and their form of payment didn’t change.
“I have never encountered an IT project that has gone live without any glitches or any issues. We will continue to address those issues as we come across them," Berrier said.
“With any large scale IT project there are always issues going live.”
Many who called the department Tuesday morning may have experienced dropped calls. There was a systemwide phone outage that affected several departments in state government that officials say was not related to the launch. It was eventually fixed around 11 a.m.
Berrier said if anyone’s been unable to get on, there’s generally less traffic during non-business hours and later in the week.
Ahead of the relaunch, the old unemployment system went offline on May 30. Biweekly claims were put on hold after June 2. Since new claims and biweekly claims couldn’t be filed during the transition period, officials are expecting a lot of volume right away. A virtual waiting room has been set up so that the system isn’t overwhelmed.
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Advocacy groups had expressed concerns that the relaunch, even though it was long overdue, could complicate things for Pennsylvanians who need unemployment services during an already challenging time. Officials say they expected some issues to start with, and they are prepared to handle them.
They promise that the new system is a vast improvement over the old one, which had been using technology from the '70s and early '80s. That 40-year-old system certainly showed its age during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, when hundreds of thousands of Pennsylvanians lost their jobs all at once.
There had been a continued call and several failed pushes for the commonwealth to overhaul the system even before the pandemic.
"It was held together with rubber bands and cut tape, and it truly was," Berrier said. "And we were holding our breath every time we had to alter that system to make a federal change to it."
Berrier said her department had been in contact with other states that revamped their unemployment compensation systems, and she says the new software will lead to a better user experience.
"It’s just gonna be a less wonky system to use," she said in a news conference at the end of May. "It’s gonna much better reflect what you would typically use to perhaps pay a utility bill or any kind of online service that you use."
With the new system, Berrier says, the department will have an easier time making adjustments on their end. The department also has online workshops set up and how-to guides for employees and employers. A call center will also be fully staffed to help users navigate the system.
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