DOL’s New Jobless Aid Adviser Targeting Fraud, State Cooperation

A new top adviser behind the Biden administration’s effort to fortify the federal-state unemployment insurance system said the US Department of Labor is focused on “fixing and funding” what went wrong during the pandemic, and will be working to expand a public identity verification solution for states to help combat fraud.

Andrew Stettner took over as deputy director for policy within the Office of Unemployment Insurance Modernization in November. Stettner, who worked as director of workforce policy and a senior fellow at The Century Foundation and advised lawmakers on UI provisions in several of the Covid-19 rescue packages before joining the administration, said he wants to provide states with “scalable solutions” and resources tailored to states’ needs and types of technology.

The office was created out of $2 billion Congress set aside for the DOL to address the antiquated unemployment insurance system after delays in jobless aid and billions lost to fraudulent claims during the pandemic. While the federal government sets the general rules for the unemployment insurance program, it’s up to states to implement and pay out the benefits, resulting in a patchwork of state jobless programs with varying technologies, systems, and security.

The office has been sending out teams of experts to audit state systems, partnered with states to “pilot” a model UI system other states could potentially adopt, and doled out millions of dollars in grants to make unemployment programs more accessible and resilient to fraud.

This interview with Stettner has been edited for length and clarity.

What are your plans for the office?

The big three goals laid out in the American Rescue Plan Act really guide our work: focusing on accuracy of the payments, which of course, includes integrity and fraud prevention; the timeliness of payments; and this new focus on equity and making sure workers that are unemployed get access to benefits.

We laid out our vision for what modernization would look like, and now we’re moving more squarely into implementation mode of that vision. So programs like the Tiger Teams and those expert teams that went in and diagnosed the problem. And now we’re moving to fix the problem and funding the states to do it and figure out the supports the states need to make those fixes.

We have now 33 states have received an equity grant and they’re assigned to work on those deliverables.

We are out there with a vision for identity verification which we know is going to be critical for this program to protect itself against criminal rings. We’ve got a public solution, Login.gov, that we want to bring across the country and we’ll have in-person validation and not just digital validation, but in-person validation in public agency locations. We’re honing our vision for modernization and technology. It really focuses a lot on meeting the states where they are, and figuring out how we can pull them to a best-in-practice mechanism for modernizing their technology that really creates the customer service that workers expect, and puts in the fraud prevention features that we need to have in this program.

Can you tell me a little bit more about whether you’re expanding the use of Login.gov? There’s been a lot of concern with some private ID verification vendors.

The department believes we should have a public solution for identity verification. It’s so important. We had to use the private vendors at the time of the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program because there wasn’t a public solution that was really available at that time. But as we go forward, we want a public solution. We are in talks with a number of states to expand and join our Login.gov pilot.

We know it needs to be partnered with in-person identity verification, and we’re seeing states already setting up in-person locations, for example, at America’s Job Centers, for people to bring in their ID. It’s a lot easier for a lot of people to do, and that’s why the in-person identity verification is also really important.

I know that states in the past have taken their own steps to try and modernize their systems. How will you help states navigate their own efforts to update their systems and get some states that may be averse to government intervention or government aid on board?

We are trying to have a best practices vision for states to follow and we are also deploying support to states to implement that vision. We are working to bring states along to best practices—things like human-centered design and user testing—and states are already going in that direction. It’s a message that states are ready to hear and they want to support. And we’re working with states to support them in doing that kind of user-driven technology, really simple things like helping states look at that data and use it effectively.

Congress set aside a big pot of money in one of the coronavirus rescue bills to focus on this issue. What is your plan to maximize what money is left from that modernization funding and how do you plan to target that?

All total, a $2 billion fund that’s focused on these three goals of equity, timeliness, and accuracy. We’re looking at scalable solutions that can be used in multiple states. And we’re also looking at what is the best way to support states in making a transition into modernization. But we also recognize and have learned that every state is different. And so we want to be able to deploy resources to help each state transform in the way that works for their stakeholders and their economy.

I think there are these two different ways we’re going to be able to modernize this program with this funding. But I think you’ll be seeing throughout 2023 more examples of how we plan to expand the pilots on things like identity verification, plain language translation, you’re going to see more efforts in all those areas.