Government Technology - March 2008 - (Page 44)

e-government S TAT E | LO C A L | F E D E R A L j j Minnesota self-service Unemployment Insurance Program improves efficiency. Synopsis: The Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development deploys an almost-paperless, Web-based system to expedite unemployment insurance processes. Reinventing the hen Minnesota’s economy took a nosedive in the late 1990s, thousands of newly unemployed workers struggled to get by on unemployment insurance — and the state’s Department of Employment and Economic Development (DEED) was saddled with piles of paperwork. All applicants to the system had to complete an initial screening and weekly review. They had to show they were seeking a job and entitled to an unemployment insurance check. Each of the state’s 130,000 employers was required to keep up-to-date tax information on file with the state’s Unemployment Insurance (UI) Program office. “Imagine a 10-by-10-foot cube filled with paper,” said Kathy Nelson, the director of Minnesota’s UI Division. Those were dark days, filled with recession and cardboard boxes. Because an economic downturn is what unemployment insurance is there for, the office’s leadership decided to do something to get rid of the boxes. Former UI Director Jack Weidenbach envisioned and sold state officials on a nearly paperless system to relieve the burdened and small UI staff. The new system was designed to handle the glut of applications that would inevitably, as the economy soured, bog down the paper-based system. “The concept was, how do you build for the future?” Nelson said. The UI program wanted a solution to respond to any fluctuations in the unemployment rate. From those seeds of discontent, rooted in the recession nearly a decade ago, Minnesota developed a streamlined Web-based system to efficiently serve applicants and employers, and cut the state’s labor and paper costs. Agency: Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development. Contact: Kirsten Morrell, spokeswoman, Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development, Kirsten. Morell@state.mn.us, 651/259-7161. System W Self-Service Unemployment The UI system’s initial phase rolled out in 2005, and focused on letting companies selfreport their tax information. In the past, state staff calculated what each company owed to the UI program based on that company’s employment and financial records. Today, the company enters the relevant data itself, and the software returns an updated balance due. It even alerts companies to periodic updates. “We needed to get out of the data entry business,” Nelson said. “The work we do with the most value is determining whether employees should be paid, and whether employers should pay for that.” This let the UI office cut its staff from 60 employees to 20 because they no longer needed to calculate employers’ payments, a time-consuming duplication of labor. MAR_08 “We can now get done in one month what used to take three,” Nelson said. Melinda Skalicky, who works for Technology Navigators Inc., a consulting firm in Owatonna, says although online tax payment systems are now commonplace, she was won over by the online UI system’s clarity amid so many dense tax regulations. “It’s very confusing,” she said about tax regulations. “We thought we had submitted everything for the quarter, but it turned out we hadn’t.” She started looking for information on Minnesota’s UI Program because the company was continuously getting fined. When she explored the new UI program site in April 2007, Skalicky said she found answers to her questions, payment alerts sent by the system and free tutorials the state offers on how to use the program. 44 B Y P AT R I C K M I C H E L S | C O N T R I B U T I N G W R I T E R http://www.govtech.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Government Technology - March 2008

Government Technology - March 2008 Contents Point of View Big Picture The Last Mile On the Scene Four Questions for... Top 25 Doers, Dreamers and Drivers Let's [Not] Get Physical No Data Left Behind Conservation King Community Drug Test Reinventing the System Better Late Than Never Closing the Deal Spectrum Products Personal Computing signal:noise Digital Communities The Expanding Focus of Digital Communities The Digital Imperative Hot Fusion Redefining Municipal Wireless Made in the USA Bridge Detectives The 2008 Agenda

Government Technology - March 2008

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