The Center For Employment Security Education And Research Inc

Programs: Unemployment insurance technology:the information technology support center (itsc) is a national collaboration of the center, the national association of state workforce agencies (the association), state workforce agencies, u. S. Department of labor (usdol), and the state of maryland. The itsc is dedicated to developing and advancing information technology solutions that provide more accurate, cost-effective, and timely service for unemployment insurance (ui) customers and staff. Itsc projects are initiated and overseen by a steering committee, members of which include stated agency, staff (including directors of state unemployment insurance and information technology offices, and state workforce agency administrators) and staff from the usdol national office. The itsc is unique in promoting multi-state information technology (it) initiatives for state agencies. Funded by usdol, itscs strengths include: promoting it information-sharing among states; developing small-scale, transferable it solutions; maintaining basic it products in use by states; educating state staff; and providing it consulting services. The itsc works with the associations unemployment insurance (ui) committee, as well as with the itsc steering committee, to identify and assist with tasks of national and state importance. The center is under contract with groups of states to provide quality assurance and technical advice and support on large scale ui it benefits and tax modernization projects. Working with several states and states consortium, the center is assisting in determining the feasibility of multiple states building a common ui automated system or single states improve their ui modernization. The states contracted with the center to help them determine common requirements, use cases, and functional designs for the new system. The primary tasking covered under these projects is for the center to provide: knowledge of unemployment insurance (ui) program;experience with a modernized ui system;experience in large software development effort;prior experience working with ui consortiums; andui business process redesign experience with emphasis on best practices and lessons learned. Under the unemployment insurance performance and accountability grant, the center/itsc will assist usdol/employment and training administration (eta) in organizing a federal/state working group that will collaboratively develop and execute a national action agenda to enhance ui program quality and accountability. The working group will identify best practices by ui functional areas (e. G. , initial claims, adjudication and fact finding, continued claims, and appeals), and identify high quality business processes for the administration and delivery of ui benefits. The overarching goal of the project is to ensure high quality customer services, the expeditious and accurate payment of ui claims, and system safeguards against fraud and abuse. The working group will identify best practices for carrying out the four primary functions that make up the benefit payment system, identify tools states can use to do their own business process analysis and reengineering of these four functions, identify new tools for capturing and using data to analyze program processes and performance, and develop an assessment tool for eta and states to use to identify business functions that need improvement. In addition, the working group will develop greater opportunities for networked information sharing and peer-to-peer learning among federal and state partners regarding ui program quality and accountability, and methodologies for disseminating successful practices on an ongoing basis. Eta engaged the center to initiate a program to better connect unemployment insurance claimants with the larger publicly-funded workforce system by developing a national vision for improving the ui and workforce systems connection and integration. This connectivity initiative was broken into separate related and integrated projects:ui and workforce connectivity phase ii collects best practices in support of the national vision developed in phase i and disseminate these best practices in the eta workforce 3one and ui community of practice websites. Ui/es (employment services) connectivity portal is the implementation of the vision by soliciting and awarding states grants to work with itsc and eta in the development of key element ad tools defined in the vision including the integrated workforce registration system, real time triage, and skills transferability and social networking.

unemployment insurance operations:the unemployment insurance separation and information data exchange system (ui sides) is subscription services to states based system that enables the communication and transmission of ui separation information request as well as the replies from state ui agencies to multi-state employers and/or third-party administrators (tpas), containing the requested separation information utilizing a standard format. The technical design and infrastructure of the system has enabled the addition of a number of standard data exchange formats and communications between state ui agencies, employers and tpas. The functionality allows states to also gather earnings data from employers on ui claimants who returned to work. Occucoder is a software product developed by the itsc and licensed by the usdol. It is available to states for use in the states workforce employment and training programs. To obtain a copy of occucoder software a state must first sign the usdol/itsc license agreement for state agency use of occucoder products. Occucoder accepts requests that specify the title of a persons occupation, a description of job duties, or both. It returns a message that contains a number of o*net-soc occupation codes, together with the corresponding occupation titles, descriptions, and certain ancillary data. A majority of the funding comes from subscriptions services from states. Limited funding comes from a usdol through the eta.

unemployment insurance training:the ui training center is comprised of training modules that are designed to supplement existing state training. These modules provide a general understanding of ui topics for employees at all levels. The ui training center seeks to provide ui federal and state employees training on ui processes and share available ui resources. Eta has engaged the center to manage the design, development and implementation of an e-learning training program on unemployment insurance that will have live webinars with an interactive component, self-study modules, knowledge checks, periodic live audio question & answer (q & a) and discussion sessions, and use of other media or approaches as determined to be valuable. Etas office of unemployment insurance (oui) is required to ensure conformity and compliance of state unemployment compensation (uc) law, regulations, rules, and operations with federal law. Eta has engaged the center to support and assess all states ui lower appeals it processes to identify what the current processes, procedures, and practices. The assessment would identify deficiencies, or strengths, in current it systems, workflow processes, communication processes, and statue restrictions. The it assessment would incorporate a brief review of the higher authority connection for those 48 states that have a second stage appeals.