GDOL acknowledges this is a repeated finding from previous years, therefore the Department concurs with this finding and offers the following response preceded by the auditor’s findings:
Auditor’s Findings:
The Georgia Department of Labor did not maintain adequate controls over the identification...
GDOL acknowledges this is a repeated finding from previous years, therefore the Department concurs with this finding and offers the following response preceded by the auditor’s findings:
Auditor’s Findings:
The Georgia Department of Labor did not maintain adequate controls over the identification, recording, and reporting of benefit overpayments associated with the Unemployment Insurance programs.
GDOL Response:
GDOL now freezes the overpayment data at the end of every month so we can conduct periodic reconciliation of the overpayment records. This will allow discrepancies to be identified faster and resolved before the deadline to submit the report for the specified period. GDOL consults with USDOL’s national 227 reporting specialists on an ongoing basis to work towards a reconciliation of previously submitted reports.
Federal regulations require an actual person to review and establish fraudulent overpayments. Due to the volume of claims and the number of cross matches to be performed on all state and federal pandemic programs, it requires multiple GDOL staffing levels to manually review all cross matches, requiring increased levels of state and federal funding.
The crossmatch process is conducted using software which runs a systematic check against weeks in a quarter for which benefits are paid and wages are reported during the same quarter. Although the program may detect weeks paid and wages reported, this alone is not indicative of an overpayment. Therefore, the process involves verification correspondence being sent to both the claimant and the employer, as applicable, to verify the status of employment, the wages earned as well as the weeks in which an individual worked and earned the wages. Based on responses, an assessment is made to determine if an overpayment exists and subsequent actions are taken accordingly. We are prohibited from assuming a match is an overpayment. It is not an overpayment until we have completed a full investigation and provided due process to all parties.
GDOL developed an aggressive plan to complete all crossmatches. We are running cross matches on all the state and federal programs. The Department has a significant number of pending and potential overpayment investigations that may result in either a non-fraud or fraud determination. We are utilizing non-overpayment staff to assist with overpayment investigations. Additionally, we are utilizing temporary agency staff to perform some clerical duties; however, federal regulations prohibit non-merit staff from adjudicating and releasing overpayment decisions. We are slated to run our last accelerated crossmatch in March 2024 and will resume our regular crossmatch schedule in June 2024.
Additionally, GDOL has procured a vendor to build and implement a modernized unemployment insurance (UI) system slated to be launched in 2026. We will continue to utilize available resources to investigate and establish overpayments in the legacy system as quickly as possible and will continue to do so within the program parameters in the new system.
Summary:
The current unemployment system is obsolete and cannot be remediated at this time Therefore, we acknowledge that this finding will persist until a system-wide resolution is implemented in the new modernized UI system.
GDOL greatly appreciates the feedback and recommendations and will consider this information in our endeavors to modernize our UI system and business processes.