From KyCIR: Effort To Modernize State’s Unemployment Technology Comes Too Late For Pandemic
EDITOR'S NOTE: Thanks to Liles Taylor for sending this story in which Bill Londrigan is quoted.
By JARED BENNETT
Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting
After Elise McCulloch lost work as a government contractor, she was relieved the state expanded unemployment to self-employed workers like herself. But that relief turned to frustration when she started the application process, loaded with dead ends and errors.
McCulloch tried to apply using four different web browsers on four different devices. The system would crash nearly every time.
It took about six hours of trying before McCulloch made it to the end of the application. But when McCulloch tried to submit it by clicking the final button, she was greeted by a popup and a spinning wheel that never loaded.