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Employment Development Department Seeks Upgrade for Benefit Systems

The California Employment Development Department appears to be moving forward with a major project that aims to replace the state's legacy benefit systems with a single solution.

The California Employment Development Department (EDD) appears to be moving forward with a major project that aims to modernize the state's legacy benefit systems.

The EDD's benefit systems include the California Unemployment Benefit Services (CUBS)/Unemployment Insurance Online (UIO), State Disability Insurance Online (SDIO), Paid Family Leave (PFL) and the EDD’s Single Client Database (SCDB) mainframe systems. In a Biennial Report presented to the Legislature last year, EDD brings attention to the issues related to these applications, including IT staff recruitment and retention difficulties, duplication and mismatch of data, and overall rising costs. The report also notes that these programs “will not be sustainable beyond 2020."

In order to solve these problems, the department has proposed replacing the individual applications with a single, integrated system and will be exploring commercial-off-the-shelf solutions as part of the initiative.

While news on the project’s progress has been seemingly quiet in recent months, an advertisement on the California’s State Jobs website suggests that the EDD is taking preliminary steps toward rolling out a replacement. According to the post, the department is seeking a director for the Benefit Systems Modernization Project, who will be charged with planning and oversight.

The director will work under the deputy director of EDD’s Information Technology Branch, a position currently held by Gail Overhouse. The final filing date for the job application is Feb. 17. 

Techwire was unable to immediately reach the the Employment Development Department by press time for more comment and details about the Benefit Systems Modernization Project. 

Maggie Cabrey is a staff writer for Techwire.