Unemployment insurance modernization: committee hears on conditional funding, timeline and data risks

Lisa Goggan, JFO contracted IT consultant, briefed the House Energy and Digital Infrastructure Committee on the Unemployment Insurance (UI) modernization project and the legislative oversight tied to its funding.

Goggan said the project had received conditional appropriations in the budget and that the release of funds was tied to JFO/JITOC review. She said JITOC's involvement in authorizing fund release was a recent development and described the sequence: money was included in the budget, release was made conditional, and later JITOC recommended release.

The consultant said the contract work did not begin immediately after that authorization; instead the project did not start until September because the state was finalizing the contract. Goggan described an early structural change: the project had been scoped into two phases (a tax module and a benefits module) with separate go-lives, but later the team decided to go live with both modules together at the end of year two.

Goggan cautioned that some anticipated costs were not fully captured in the initial figures. She noted the project documentation listed $45,000,000 in one place but that business costs related to staff augmentation and business redesign were not included in that number. She also flagged data and legacy-system migration risks, saying legacy code and data transformation are areas to watch closely.

Committee members pressed for clarity on the amounts and timing; Goggan said more up-to-date ABC/budget forms and project documents should be produced after contract signing and that the legislature should expect updates and potentially more information about total costs when the project team reports again.

No formal committee action was taken; members discussed further oversight and potential follow-up briefings.