This report outlines how modernizing unemployment insurance (UI) technology with a worker-centered approach can improve access, efficiency, and equity in the UI system.
This report details the use of the historic investment of $1 billion in funding from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) to the Department of Labor and state unemployment (UI) agencies to modernize state UI programs.
For the past year, modernization teams at the Department of Labor (DOL) have been helping states identify opportunities to automate rote, non-discretionary, manual tasks, with the goal of helping them speed up the time that it takes to process claims. This post provides more context on Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and potential use cases in unemployment insurance.
This report describes how the government can use widespread social media feedback and begin to build long-term measures to center people’s experience as an important component of policy design
The Sprint 2 Report: Michigan UI Claimant Experience by Civilla and New America examines challenges in Michigan’s unemployment insurance (UI) system and provides human-centered design recommendations to improve accessibility, clarity, and user experience.
The experience of the COVID-19 pandemic and its induced recession underscored the crucial importance of unemployment insurance (UI) to workers, and to the stability of the American economy. Temporary federal expansions of unemployment systems during the pandemic showed how they can quickly be scaled to increase benefit levels and to include categories of workers who were not previously eligible, such as the self-employed, caregivers, and low-wage workers. And, states showed that separate programs can be set up to provide similar benefits to workers who are explicitly excluded from unemployment insurance—in particular immigrants who do not have a documented immigration status.
Through the ACCESS project, key collaborators have shared insights into current and future opportunities for alignment within their agencies, including potential enablers for and barriers to alignment activities.
American Public Human Services Association (APHSA)
The Unemployment Insurance Equitable Access Toolkit contains common equity recommendations, promising practices, and insights, represented visually as a different floor of an agency office building, compiled in one interactive document.
This guide is intended to provide everything else, with a focus on the basics of UI technology projects, guidance on standards for equitable uses of technology, and strategies for how to have a positive impact on these projects.
