Updated UI system to provide faster service, fraud detection
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The Michigan Unemployment Insurance Agency is replacing its decade-old system with one that can streamline UI benefits processing and detect fraud.
Michigan is modernizing its unemployment insurance system to improve ease of use for both claimants and employees and streamline claims processing and benefits payments.
The state’s Unemployment Insurance Agency partnered with Deloitte to adopt the company’s Unemployment Framework for Automated Claim and Tax Services system, UIA said in a Nov. 15 announcement.
The new platform will help users better manage new unemployment insurance claims and wage determinations. uFACTS limits the amount of custom coding UIA needs to do to analyze unemployment insurance data or make program changes and is able to connect with other state software, allowing for “seamless access for claimants and UIA staff,” agency officials said.
Other services include the collection, scheduling and determination of unemployment insurance appeals and the establishment, prevention, detection, investigation and collection of overpayments of UI benefits. uFACTS also provides economic research to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Employment and Training Administration and other labor market data users.
The new system is replacing the decade-old Michigan Integrated Data Automated System, which had made it “difficult to efficiently process worker claims and employer payments, especially during quickly changing economic conditions such as the recent global pandemic,” officials said. uFACTS’ cloud capabilities enable automatic scaling to accommodate large increases in traffic.
“The Unemployment Insurance Agency is working hard every day to improve all the ways that Michigan workers interact with our unemployment system, and that starts with a new computer system that is human-centered and easy to use,” UIA Director Julia Dale said. “Already, the UIA is in better shape than at any time over the last decade – but that’s not good enough. Michigan workers should be able to apply for benefits with confidence, so they can support their families without worrying about when or if they’ll receive benefits.”
uFACTS is slated to be fully operational in 2025, and the 10-year contract is projected to cost more than $78 million.