By Sarah Chaney
WASHINGTON -- States including Rhode Island, Kansas and New York
are turning to tech companies including Amazon Web Services and
Google to handle an unprecedented rise in unemployment claims
triggered by the coronavirus pandemic.
More than 30 million Americans have filed for unemployment
benefits since efforts to contain the virus led to widespread
business shutdowns in mid-March. State labor departments across the
nation have struggled with busy phone lines, website crashes and
delays in unemployment payments, with some operating on decades-old
technology.
Amazon.com Inc.'s technology is helping some states address
these challenges. Rhode Island, formerly dependent on old computer
systems and outdated call-center technology, rolled out federal
programs on a quicker timeline than most other states, according to
federal and state officials. Massachusetts's online system has been
running without outages throughout the coronavirus pandemic.
Kansas's call center is able to field more calls compared with
earlier in the crisis, thanks to systems recently put in place,
according to state officials.
Google is working with New York and Illinois, among others, to
upgrade their labor departments' decades-old computer systems, said
Todd Schroeder, the director of public-sector digital strategy for
Google Cloud.
Google, a unit of Alphabet Inc., is using cloud technology and
artificial intelligence to upgrade the state agencies' website
capacities and automate as much of the claim-filing process as
possible, Mr. Schroeder said. Chatbots, for example, have been
built to answer routine questions and relieve the pressure on human
claims specialists.
The Texas Workforce Commission, which oversees unemployment
benefits and other services for the nation's second-most populous
state, worked with Accenture PLC to develop an
artificial-intelligence system for steering inquiries using
chatbots.
For Amazon, the new business from overburdened states is a
bright spot in the company's bid to work with governments. Amazon
is fighting the award of a more than $10 billion cloud-computing
contract from the Defense Department to Microsoft Corp., arguing
that criticism by President Trump of the contract process and of
Amazon itself played an unfair role in the Pentagon's decision.
Members of the House Judiciary Committee recently called on
Amazon Chairman and CEO Jeff Bezos to testify on its private-label
practices after a Wall Street Journal article detailed the
company's use of third-party-seller data to develop its own
products.
Rhode Island turned to Amazon Web Services for help in April
when its old computer systems and outdated call center became
overwhelmed by the number of individuals seeking unemployment
assistance during the coronavirus pandemic. The state's labor
department drew on some of the federal dollars awarded in a
stimulus package. As of the end of April, Rhode Island had paid
about $300,000 for the new Amazon technology.
Amazon and a Providence, R.I.-based nonprofit called Research
Improving People's Lives developed an online application that
accepts benefits applications from independent contractors and
other employees made newly eligible by the federal stimulus bill.
The changes allowed Rhode Island's labor department to be among the
first states to begin rolling out the federal program.
Rhode Island also replaced call-center technology with the same
system Amazon uses to handle call and internet volume during Black
Friday sales events before Christmas. The cloud-based technology
allowed the Rhode Island labor department to change from using 74
phone lines that left callers waiting for minutes to a system that
can take 1,000 calls a second.
"Nobody who tried to certify in Rhode Island yesterday got a
busy signal, " said Scott Jensen, director of the Rhode Island
labor department, after the new call system was launched in April.
About 75,000 Rhode Islanders were able to file claims on the phone
the first day the system was implemented, an Amazon spokeswoman
said.
In the early stages, Amazon is handling the bulk of the
technical work to revamp the Rhode Island labor department's
system. Amazon developers will stay on for the next year and help
train state government staff to maintain the system after Amazon
staff leave, a Rhode Island labor department spokeswoman said.
Kansas is still grappling with legacy technologies, said Delia
Garcia, the state's secretary of labor. Individuals are accustomed
to the quick satisfaction and ease that comes with shopping on
sites such as Amazon, she said.
"People are used to that, and then they have to go and file
their unemployment claims on an antiquated system," Ms. Garcia
said. "The public is floored, and as they should be."
The Kansas Department of Labor has spent about $75,000 through
early May bringing on Amazon Web Services to help expand its
unemployment call center. Ms. Garcia said because of the new
technology, the department has quadrupled the number of calls it
can handle compared with at the beginning of the pandemic.
Massachusetts was processing unemployment claims using Amazon's
cloud technology before the coronavirus pandemic. In 2017, the
state migrated its system to the cloud, said Charles Pearce, a
Massachusetts labor department spokesman.
The state's online system has been able to handle the sharp rise
in claims volume that caused many state websites to freeze.
Massachusetts processed more than 400,000 continuing claims on
Sunday, April 26. On average, it processes 20,000 claims on a
typical Sunday, Mr. Pearce said.
Amazon is also helping Kentucky and West Virginia set up remote
call centers to field unemployment inquiries, according to one of
the company's filings with the Securities and Exchange
Commission.
--Kate King contributed to this article.
Write to Sarah Chaney at sarah.chaney@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 12, 2020 05:44 ET (09:44 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2020 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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