EDD Update: Improving the Present & Planning for the Future.

• Author: Counts, James C.
• Position: CaliforniaTax

The Employment Development Department (EDD) has been working to modernize their systems. They began their Business Process Re-engineering (BPR) phase of their Benefit Systems Modernization BSM) project in October with the objective to assess, analyze and redesign the business processes that impact the customer services, complete technical capabilities analysis and devise a system implementation approach. The revision of EDD's IT systems will include revamping Unemployment Insurance (UI), Disability Insurance (DI) and Paid Family Leave with the purpose of developing a system that is customer-centric and responsive.

ACES Upgrades

At the same time, the Tax Branch started a 10-month effort to upgrade their Accounting and Compliance Enterprise System (ACES) and expect it to go live Nov. 14. The enhancements for both external and internal users include a redesign of e-services for business, an increase in customer service, streamlined back-end processes and improved overall system performance.

During the initial pandemic period when EDD was working to process the large volume of UI benefit claims, a large portion of employees in the Tax Branch assisted the UI Branch to process these claims. These employees are all back to their normal duties in the Tax Branch.

Picking Up the Slack

In July, the EDD partnered with a vendor to begin onboarding additional support representatives to assist with backlogged workloads. This additional support represents an expansion of the EDD's existing civil service staff and the contract for these agents will last until September. The EDD is working through the Self-Employment/Employment Substantiation workload. The Federal Continued Assistance Act requires Pandemic Unemployment Assistance (PUA) claimants who received benefits on or after Dec. 27, 2020, to submit documentation to prove they were (or planned to be) self-employed or employed when they applied for benefits.

The EDD paid out roughly $ 180 billion in benefits, of which $20 billion is estimated to be for fraudulent claims. The EDD is not establishing overpayments on the federal PUA as it is waiting on further federal guidelines, but overpayments on regular UI benefits are being established.

Audit & Compliance in the Field The Field Audit and Compliance Division (FACD) will not be doing in-person audits of employers located outside of California until July. Otherwise, the FACD is back to doing all of their usual audit functions. Auditors report that they...