Employment Development Department: policies and practices.

Existing law requires the Employment Development Department to administer a program for the payment of unemployment compensation to the eligible unemployed. Existing law requires the department to periodically review policies and practices used to determine eligibility and benefits that result in delayed eligibility unemployment determinations or benefit payments and that fail to identify or prevent fraud. Existing law requires the director of the department to report the results of the first review to the Legislature on or before July 1, 2015, and authorizes the submission of subsequent reports. This bill would require the Employment Development Department to take various actions in response to recommendations by the California State Auditor regarding the timely issuance of unemployment insurance benefits and the reduction of fraud associated with the payment of those benefits. Among other things, the bill would require the department, on or before May 31, 2022, to identify elements of the Benefit Modernization System IT project and to prioritize implementing these elements. The bill would also require the department, on or before May 31, 2022, to implement a policy establishing a process for tracking and analyzing the reasons why unemployment insurance claimants call for assistance. On or before October 31, 2022, and every 6 months thereafter, the bill would require the department to analyze the data to improve call center performance, as specified. The bill would require the department to provide the Legislature with a plan for assessing the effectiveness of its fraud prevention and detection tools by May 1, 2022, and to provide a report to the Legislature with an update on its progress on performing this analysis by July 1, 2022. The bill would require the department to designate a unit that is responsible for coordinating all unemployment insurance fraud prevention and detection efforts, as specified.