 the Department of Labor in our third week, third day of committee activity. Commissioner Harrington, it's great to have you and your team welcome back a person. I think it's also been a while since we've had chance to do that. I think the three of you know most of us. You may or may not know Senator Parasette, so I don't know if you want to introduce yourself. Good morning. I'm representing Wyndham County. I live in front of her. Happy to be here. And we have Senator Brock and Senator Cummings who are not necessarily early birds, but I'm sure that would be a great thing. Yeah, not a problem. So if you're... The only other comments I wanted to add for those who are here is we did receive a letter from Vermont Legal Aid with their comments on progress made with the Department of Labor. I told the commissioner he could choose how much or how little we wanted to address that. I think things like the IT system, we have questions about any way progress there, but we can save that for a more in-depth discussion when you have a written response or if you want to address it an hour that you have. So for the record, Michael Harrington, commissioner for the Department of Labor, happy to be back. It's nice to be here. It's good to have you. Okay. Hello. Hello. Sorry. No, not a problem. So we're just doing introductions. I've been with the department since 2017 versus the deputy commissioner then as the interim commissioner and then was permanently appointed in June of 2020. And with me today, I have Cameron Wood, who you may know as our unemployment insurance director. He also is now serving as our policy and legislative affairs director. So he'll retain both of those titles from a political appointment perspective, but we do have an associate director of UI who has been in UI for a long time and she runs the day-to-day operations. I also have Matt Berowitz with us who I'm sure all of you are familiar with. If you're not, you will become very familiar with Matt over the coming weeks. Matt is our chief economist, but also runs our labor market and economic development division in terms of overseeing jobs data and occupational data. So you'll hear from him probably numerous times. And then just for the sake of time, knowing that there may be a lot that the committee itself wants to cover questions that people have. So I'm happy to give a quick rundown. A couple of things I was going to highlight will, I think, touch on aspects that Legal Aid had in their letter. So we can address some of those as well. And then if we want to jump into questions, we can do that. Great. So first off, I'll just start by passing this around. I've got more copies if you want to. But this just gives a quick rundown of the department. I figured out one sheet from maybe the new members. It gives our four divisions and also highlights the wage an hour unit, which is a statutory program that I think is critical. Oh, yeah. So once on the heart. And then it gives a, again, as most of you are very familiar, but it just gives a very high level of the department. The department sits at the cabinet level with the governor, like many other agencies and other departments. We operate our workforce development division, our unemployment insurance program, the labor market information division, workers compensation and safety. And under safety are things like BOSHA, Project WorkSafe, passenger tramway. And then again, I highlighted the wage an hour unit because they're really charged with labor protections under the law for employees, especially around unpaid wages. It gives a breakdown of our funding in terms of look at how much we receive in federal versus general funds, special fund and interdepartmental fund funding. Obviously, we've been predominantly federally funded for a long time. I will say that there has been a recent shift in that breakdown just in the past two years, as you can imagine. So I would say our percentage at one point was as high as 85 to 86% federally funded. You can see that that has changed. And that's predominantly because during the pandemic, there were additional funds through the general fund that were allocated to the department to cover some operational components as well as some additional funds for ongoing workforce development efforts. And then the statewide map there on the bottom left just shows the fact that we have a number of regional offices around the state. The green ones are essentially what we consider our hub locations. So again, they cover all of the state and then we've had some small satellite locations. Those aren't always marked with a physical space, most of the time they are, but sometimes it's a partnership we have where we have staff there on a regular basis. But it might be a space we share with CCB or work out a library or something like that. But those are the communities or areas where we provide non-direct services. So Michael, there's a huge desert here in Springfield and White River Junction, where I thought we had those. Yeah, I mean, so this is a general representation. We don't have a hub there. We have offices there. So we have a Springfield office. We have a White River Junction office. The White River Junction office literally has, you know, for as long as I've known that the department only had two staff people in it. And we have a rule that we don't have people staff in office by themselves. So in most cases you get one call out that closes an office for a day and we shift staff around. So we, again, are looking at other ways that we can maybe not operate in our own siloed office but be partnered with another organization or institution in that area. So then we don't have to worry about one person calling out and having to close the office. Do you have a good example of that? Like where we had partnered? Yeah. So what we've been looking at for a little while has been partnering with Vogue Rehab because we serve some of the same individuals. So it's in Bennington, Vermont, where it is one of our larger offices, but we do share a space with Vogue Rehab. So it's been a great tag team effort because we're able to share resources and supports and make sure that there's more continuity when the client comes in. But then we're also looking at, in Springfield at one point, for a long time we're not in a state office building. We had looked to move to potentially a state office building but also looking for space with CCB. So again, that would be another potential type of partnering. But right now they're in the state office building, aren't they? They are, we are not. So we're in a Springfield office. So what ends up happening is, and I didn't put it on the sheet but I'm assuming most agencies and departments are struggling with the same thing based on what I've heard. I mean we run anywhere between 20 to 30% vacancy rate at any given time. So coming out of the pandemic we were just decimated. A lot of turnover, a lot of churn. Matt can talk about what that looks like at the statewide level. I think all of us heard it. Yeah, so part of what we're running into is how do we keep these offices open and running with the limited staff we have. Springfield is one of those where it can be open and then it could easily, you know, if we've got a couple of people out on FMLA and we've got one person out who calls in sick, that may close the office. And then we have to shift staff around to either work remote, like telework, or they might go from the Springfield office down to the Brattleboro office for the day and work out at Brattleboro office. So if I could just follow up on this. This map isn't to represent, because one of the things we'll get to at some point is our one stop. Our one stop, this whole notion of going to one place regionally where you'd have your workforce development help you get. UI help you get anything that touch the door. And those are not these. Correct. So I mean we have one federally certified one stop. I will also tell you our foot traffic like literally dropped. Yeah. So again, a lot of these. So what we've been trying to do is it's really been a shift of philosophy where staff have traditionally been able to sit in the office, open the door and our clients come to us and we have changed our methodology. So we have certain days and hours when they can walk in, but often our staff are out in the community trying to find clients. So they're working with other partner agencies. They might be we have what we call labor on location so they might go to a library or another place where there are a grouping of client potential clients. And then we're also doing more direct outreach. So you probably saw last year, like we had some of our job fairs and outreach is we're at baseball games across the state. So you get 4000 people going to a baseball game Burlington. We are now able to at least shake hands with most of those people and try to see if we can provide direct services. Are you tracking metrics of success? Maybe that's a bad question. Yeah. So again, it's a question of what is success. So we do track like how many people attended job fair how many employers attend. We have rough numbers on like how many hires came out of a job fair. We do most of our program and I was going to get to this but the challenge we run into is that right now workforce development. There's all the things we would like to do and then there's what we're required to do under the federal government. And so what we end up struggling with is like new initiatives innovative thinking they don't always fit into the federal box that they like to put us in. So, you know, we have a number of metrics we track for the federal government for the US Department of Labor. And so most of our funding is all based on enrollment in program. So it's not just enough to have a connection with somebody we have to try to get them enrolled. And you hate to boil it down to numbers and dollars when you're talking about people. But that's where most of our federal funding for workforce development comes from is through enrollments in our programs. I mean, numbers are helpful too, right? Yeah, I think if the numbers are correct, we have 24,000 open jobs in the state and you know, are you coordinating across other agencies to really tackle that number? Sector by sector? We are. I mean, I would say it's a little bifurcated just because, you know, programs get designed based on where the money is and where the resources are. So it's not as maybe rated or interlocked as we would like. I think the state workforce development board is a key key role in convening those partners and talking about statewide strategies. And I'm looking at Senator Clarkson because she sits on the board. As we only meet quarterly, it's sort of a little... Yeah. And I think there's a desire to make the board, again, much more of a driver around identifying priority sectors, identifying kind of a uniform or cohesive approach to how we tackle getting people into jobs in particular sectors. Again, our enrollments, like many are very low because the number of people who actually need services is very low. Actually, the number of people who need services, statewide interprets everything that we know people need services on its high. Well, again, when we talk about all that. Sure. But when we talk about jobs and joblessness, you know, the number of unemployed for monitors and the number of unemployed for monitors collecting benefits is historically low. Yes. And so that is true. But that's service, but not services as I can pay off. Correct. Yeah. And I was thinking more about job seekers looking for jobs. Right. And to follow up on her 24,000, how many are on UI? Currently... How many are what? On UI. So just a throw caveat out there because I like to help Matt out here. So there's a misnomer or misconception. There's the number of people who are unemployed and that makes up our unemployment rate in the state. So the current number of unemployed for monitors is 8,000. 8,400. 8,400. And the number of people actually collecting benefits does not play into the unemployment rate. So the number of people collecting benefits is 4,000. So again, it's about half the number of the, a little less than half the number of the actual number of unemployed for monitors. It is, this is our busiest season in UI November through March because of seasonal layoffs. And most companies decide to downsize if they're going to downsize during that period as well. But also, just so for context, 4,000 is actually below our average for this time of year. So in a traditional non-pandemic year, it wouldn't be uncommon to see roughly 6,000 people on our defense. Senator Crawford. I've seen various statistics on the number of folks who have left the workforce over time ranging from 24 to 48,000. Where did they go? So I'll do my best to represent Matt, but I'm going to ask Matt to come up here. The number one contributing factor is they aged out of the workforce in one shape or another. Most of them were beyond retirement age. So they were staying because they loved their job. It was easy to, to, and when it became complicated with the pandemic, they use that opportunity to exit the workforce. For summer, many were at retirement age and many were close to retirement age. And a lot of places also looked from a financial perspective offered early retirement. So there are many other factors. I'll let Matt jump in, but most of it is around retirements. Yes, good morning. I'm Matt Garowitz, director of economic labor market information with the Vermont Department of Labor. Right now, relative to before the pandemic, our labor force is about 20,000 people less than where it was. So we have recovered for a while. We were 30,000 down. We did see some positive re-entrance back into labor force over 2022. At least that's what our best information is. I've seen national studies that estimate about 75% of the labor force contraction is related specifically to demographics. So if you line up the baby boomer generation against the calendar, the leading into the baby boomer turned 65 in 2011. That means the leading into the baby boomers turned 75 in 2021. And, you know, if I had some nice pictures and graphs, I could point where you can see, you can see this like this trend that happens because the recession that happened in 2007 was a bad one, right? Where housing prices stopped, prices they all went to the tank. And if you were planning on retiring, then you'd say, whoa, this isn't a good time. I'm going to stay in the labor force. So 2009-10, we actually had this kind of like pent up demand for retirements until the economy improved. However, this recession, housing prices, asset prices, stock portfolios through the roof. So if you were close to retirement now, a lot of people said, this is going to be my exit. Though we focus on demographics a lot as it relates to labor force, I think it's really important to kind of look at that kind of grab bag of catch all concepts that make up the other portions. And what we're seeing is a lot of times that is people with less than a college education. So that's a population that typically gets hardest during economic downturns. And that is one of the populations that really hasn't recovered or returned to labor force. So when we talk about downward pressure and labor force outside demographics, that's a population I really zoom in on. And that can present itself in a number of different socioeconomic characteristics, race, ethnicity as well. But particularly people with less than a four year college education. There are other indications that some people have gone down to one income earner instead of two in the household. But I think from just a big statement, I really look at the people with less than a college education. That's where they're showing a tremendous amount of that they haven't returned to the labor force as they were pre-pandemic. One of the major issues that I think is a concern of this committee is how we replenish the labor force. And that I know is a direct function of the Department of Labor. But I'm wondering if the Department has any thoughts along those lines. So it's definitely going to be a joint effort. I think the traditional, we need to make sure we're training and retaining those folks moving through high school, coming out of college. So there's a big effort on making sure we've got the right training programs in place to make sure we have the skills to meet our employer needs. There's the marketing and recruitment aspect. So some of that is with us. Most of it is at the agency of commerce when we talk about like outward marketing and recruitment of people or incentivizing people to move to our state, which you've heard the governor talk about as well. Is this committee just pioneer? Yes, correct. It came out of this committee, the relocation incentive program, right? And a number of others. So looking at untapped markets of individuals. So I'm curious, and I haven't really had a deep conversation with Matt about this either, but eventually we'll see some correction probably coming through this whenever this next economic downturn occurs. The number of available jobs or businesses looking to grow may contract as well, just based on historical knowledge so that demand will be for workers will be less. That's not a solution, but they were keeping a close eye on that. So I think again, it's making sure that people who are here stay here and then making sure that we're also replenishing or I attributed or equate to a leaky bucket, right? So what are the factors that are causing people to leave the workforce? So it also may be other challenges. I'm sure we'll talk a lot in here about things like childcare and other barriers that prevent people housing that prevent people from either relocating to Vermont or prevent them from returning to the workforce, right? I have no doubt that some of the folks Matt talks about in terms of where they've gone to a single income household is because one of the wage earners needed to make a very difficult decision to leave the workforce in order to care for a loved one, care for a child, because they couldn't either find childcare or couldn't afford childcare. Is there, and I feel like we always just want Matt to stay in our room all the time, but you know, anyone can answer this question. Are there things that made Vermont labor issues unique in the rest of the country? It sounds like the sped up the demographic shift nationally. Everyone's struggling with childcare housing, but are we a unique outlier in any of those areas? That's a great question. And I'm not 100% sure that I've tried to do stuff thinking on this. What makes this economic recovery from the COVID recession so different is that the competition for labor is really heightened across the country. And even like as opposed to what's happening in 2007 through 2010 where it's like all urban, it was urban based economic recovery and the rural parts of the country are hollowing themselves out as everyone migrated into urban settings for opportunities. We're not seeing that in this last economic downturn. And so it is just like carte blanche. And I think what changes it is that now I think a lot of our states are in tune with it. And so the competition for labor is not just like, you know, it's not just Vermont trying to recruit people from California. It's like the other 48 states trying to recruit people in California in addition to Vermont. And also the international climate is very different. So historically the answer for the United States has been we're going to change our immigration policies. We're going to welcome in new workers. The U.S. for many people is no longer the primary destination of choice. And we're seeing that Canada is taking measures right now saying that, you know, we're, you know, we're going to prevent people from out of the country buying houses in Canada. So like what I'm hearing is the latest news. So, you know, so it's going to be interesting to see. But I don't think there's, so what makes Vermont different? I do things that I've heard. One is we certainly went into the pandemic with an older workforce. So that made us more susceptible to the challenge of the pandemic. It also makes it harder for us to recover because many of those people aren't coming back to the workforce after the pandemic. The other issue, the other thing that's pretty unique to Vermont that I've heard and this is just anecdotal from my counterparts in other states. Many other states are having to incentivize people to go back to work. Right. So they left the workforce and they're still at prime working age. And they are having a hard time returning to the workforce. We know from our numbers that that's not the case here in Vermont. I mean, certainly there are people who were always trying to re-employ, but when you look at other states, our unemployment rate is extremely low. The number of people, like they're having to think of incentives not to get people to relocate just to go back to work. And we have not necessarily had that same situation. So, Maine, as we know, has a similar demographic. How much, Matt, do you work with Maine numbers? Because they would be interesting to compare to Garacatia's question about, you know, who would, you know, are they having a similar, my guess is they have, it's almost exactly the same picture. 100%. I just co-presented with the LMI director at the state of Maine, CCB put together a New England based forum. And so I invited Maine and Connecticut, so the three of us co-presented all together and looking at Maine's statistics. It's fascinating because, you know, I can speak and interchange Maine and Vermont where our labor force participation rate used to be very high in Vermont. We used to talk about it all the time. We had a highly educated population. Our labor force participation was high, higher than the US. COVID happens, it drops down significantly, and then it just kind of like slowly went back, but basically plateaued. The growth is no longer happening. And Maine is the same. Most states like New Hampshire and other states actually, they're continuing to see a rise, even though they might not be back to where they were pre-pandemic as far as labor force participation. But Maine is that same where it just looks, you know, very static as far as the force participation is concerned. Again, demographically, race, ethnicity, age, very similar topic. Yeah, they're so interesting. And Connecticut, how's Connecticut doing? They're a little different as far as the New England state. They've always been kind of an odd state. I've never really got my hands around the Connecticut's economy. Well, now that they've excused to New York, now they're centered in Connecticut. And they have some large defense contractors, is my understanding in there, which can really boom and bust them based on who gets contracts. Speaking of immigration, we're hearing from newer parts of Vermont that have accepted Afghan refugees, but they want more of that. You know, now they have the systems in place. They're not as a travel bro, as a great example. Are you all participating in more kind of refugee settlement-oriented labor? So we took a pretty heavy role in the last year, a year and a half. So we actually have a foreign labor program manager from the workforce development division. And we've assisted both Brattleboro, and I'm never going to remember the acronyms, but there's one in the Chittenden County area, there's one in Brattleboro, and Brattleboro is also helping Vermont. For Bennington, which I'm from Bennington, so my mom was actually one of the individuals that was helping with the resettlement of some of the Afghan refugees. So that actually gave me a very unique perspective into the challenges they were facing. So we've given some significant funding to like the Brattleboro Development Credit Corporation, as well as the associate organization that's in the Chittenden area. So we are involved. It's interesting because there is a certain number of benefits and entitlements they receive from the federal government that comes out of the office, the relocation office, and the agency of human services here. So they're entitled to a certain amount of benefits first, and they have to use those benefits first before they shift to using, like, are we all with benefits? But some of the, like, acronyms that we're able to help with are probably pretty unique to these types of populations. So obviously things like translation services is a big one, but we can also help. So, for instance, this was a new one to me. You know, if someone is looking to become employed and they need dentures, right, we can actually help cover part of the cost for them to actually go see a health care professional to receive dentures, or something like professional clothing. So if they are doing interviews and they need new professional clothing, we can help. That's all federal. Well, it comes through our wheel. So we start covering dentures for the rest of our population. So those are, but again, that... Somebody's getting dentures. Someone's getting dentures. So when it all comes out of, like, they get a certain amount, a lot, of funds and benefits when they transition here, and then when those run out, then we're able to help with, you know, things like if they're going through a training program and they need to acquire their own tool set, like, you can help cover the cost of tools, things like that. So great. And how about training? Training too. I was going to say that's one of the big pluses. Yeah. So that's a... I was kind of counting that as an obvious one, but probably I shouldn't have assumed that, but things like on-the-job training, apprenticeships as a big one, other work experience or work-based learning efforts, they're certainly... The challenge has been really the limited language proficiency. So there's a big barrier there and the lack of translators, right? So it's like there's already the gap and then we don't have enough resources to fill the gap. The other one we see are things like needing to learn how to drive so they can get to work, right? Because there isn't always public transportation available. But what we... So a unique service that we can also work with and provide some funding for is if there's a... Like if there's a group of new Americans working out of a single employer and they all tend to live in the same area, we can actually help with coordinating regular work transportation for them. So we can't do one-offs, but let's say there were 10 or 15 people living in a housing complex that all worked for the same employer, we could then work on providing transportation. Senator Harris. Yeah, that's great. And I'm familiar with those programs in Broward River and it really made a difference. And there was something that expired at the end of December. So I don't know if that was... Yeah, I don't know if it was through us or not. It may have been out of human services, too. Right. And just in public transportation, a nice thing about this is that if we are able to provide services to the new Americans, then the existing people can also write that. So it helps them just meet people and it helps the employers, too. Is there ever a situation where you get funding from the employers to help sponsor that? Not to us directly, so typically... Or the program. Yeah, so we don't receive funding from employers. Employers invest through things like apprenticeship programs. The big thing for us is there has to be a job at the end of the tunnel, right? So a lot of people like to offer work experience or some type of life experience, but there's no guaranteed job at the end. So it's really important for us in our federal programs that if you're going to have a work experience, that there's a job waiting for the individual at the end. And that's the key around apprenticeship. Right. So they actually are an apprentice with an employer. And there's actually also a wage and career ladder that has to occur at the end. So they go through their hours, they graduate from the program, and they might automatically go from $14 an hour to $16 an hour or something like that. So there has to be a wage progression upon completion, and there has to be an employment after the completion. Okay, and that's to use your federal dollars. Federal and state. So the state does funds some of our apprenticeship work. There's also federal apprenticeship dollars as well. We talk a lot about upscaling and training, but I keep hearing, again and again, really basic skills ELL and Drivers Ed are huge stumbling blocks, and they seem to fall through the cracks of a lot of different jurisdictions. We heard about foster kids, and they can't get Drivers Ed through patience of education. They need a car from AHS to make this work. Are there any things like that where if we put a small one-time fund in to get a car or to jumpstart an ELL program, we could? It'd probably be worth a bigger conversation, but it highlights what I was talking about, which is we're really handicapped because so much of our workforce development staff, and we've had this conversation with Chair Marcott as well, because it has to fit within the box of what the federal expectations are of the program, which really does not leave much room for creative thinking. And if you can imagine, the federal government doesn't focus a lot on creative thinking. That's not fair. But it is big. And so I think those are the opportunities where if we can find funding or even additional resources so that we can provide that assistance. So again, 80 something per 82% of our workforce development division is federally funded. So think about the fact that there's really only 18% of the funds are actually state. That also means only 18% of our staff or staff time can actually go towards statewide initiatives. So that's where we've talked a lot with other committees and probably this one as well in the past about how do we make ourselves more capable and ability to meet Vermont's needs as opposed to what the federal government determines. We're clear on that. Sarah's being very clear. Yes, yes. And so Sarah Buxton is our workforce development director. She's a former legislator and that she'll be before this committee, I'm sure numerous times. So happy to have her come in to talk in more detail. Do you want me to hit on anything else before? Do you want to do IT before we? Sure. I think what I want to just hit on is when I look across the department, what we talk about priorities. A big one is modernization. We all think of UI, but the Department of Labor is actually going through four major modernization efforts. So UI is our largest. We're in the middle of modernizing our workers' compensation system. We're also in the middle of modernizing our workforce development system. And these are IT systems. And then we're also working through the agency of administration to upgrade our, we have to have a dual system in our accounting and fiscal office because of the federal requirements. So we have a program called FARS, which is like federal accounting and reconciliation system or something like that. And so we, there's a massive amount of time that is spent truing up the FARS system with the state's accounting system at the end of each quarter and the end of each year. So we're actually the state's going through modernization, which means we're also trying to get on with that one system. So we have those four projects. The thing I'll say about modernization, we actually will have a report coming to the legislature in the next week or two from myself and the Secretary of the ADS. I would say we're on track. I know there's a concern from Legal Aid and the Legal Aid Letter about our timing, but most large scale IT projects take anywhere from 12 to 18 months. In some cases, extremely large or complex programs can take two years or more to go through requirements gathering, drafting the RFP, putting out the RFP, going through selection and then negotiating a contract. So I know Legal Aid is concerned about the fact that in March we put out the RFP and it hasn't gone anywhere. That's not necessarily accurate. There's been a lot of work in negotiation that's been going on behind the scenes. So we have to go through and score what, in some cases, what was the largest response we got? Do you want to introduce yourself? Yes. For the record, Cameron Wood, the policy and legislative affairs director for the department, also the employment insurance director, the largest RFP we got I think was close to 1,000 pages. Right. So there's a massive amount of review that has to happen. One thing, and I think many are familiar, unemployment insurance is probably right up there with healthcare when we talk about complexity because we're talking about eligibility. And you're not just talking about eligibility once, you're talking about someone has to certify they're eligible for each week they receive benefits. And so there's a whole number of federal checks and balances that have to happen. So we have put out the RFP. We've received the proposals we've gone through and reviewed and scored the proposals. We've gone back out to the top vendors to ask for what's known as a BAFO or best-in-final offer to see whether or not we can reduce some of the cost on those. And then we will come together and identify who we believe the top vendor is. And that'll probably happen in the next month. The best-in-final offers will be back on January 19th. So I would say within the next two weeks or so following that will make selection. And then we start the actual negotiation process on the agreement, which is going to be, it's a $35 million project. So it's going to be an extensive contract negotiation. So again, we're well within the timeframe for contracting through the state, but it does take a long time. And then you're talking about probably another three years of development and launch after the contract gets signed. And I'm happy to come back. We talk about another day. So I sit as the chair-elect for the National Association of State Workforce Agencies. Their priorities are workforce and UI. And so they have a UI integrity center and data center. So they do a lot with UI technology. So I've asked them, they're going to provide me some of the maps that just illustrate the fact that, you know, before the pandemic there might have been, you know, five to seven states at any given time looking to modernize their system. There's like something like 28 states in some way, shape, or form are going through modernization right now. And there's like five legitimate vendors, right? So, you know, it's not like there's a sea of providers. There's probably five legitimate vendors that have proof and products on the market. But given how long we have been on this modernization, we must be, surely, we must be one of the oldest IT systems in the country. I mean, it's about 35 years old at this point. Oh, well, so the first went live in June 7th of 19, we turned something like 50 in 2020 during the pandemic. Yeah. Okay. So my point is, we should be at the top of the list. I realize we have there are a few vendors who can actually do this work. But surely after discussing this for the 20 years I've been in the legislature, this is my 19th year. This has been on top of the docket for so long. Brandy, you know, as our editor. I understand all those problems, but surely we must be at the top of the list. But there is no list, right? So it's whoever is out of the gate in contracts with the vendor first. The issue, though, is, as I recall, the Department K to the joint IT oversight committee with its planned timetable, we approved a certain amount of money to start with. Where are you relative to what you told IT, the JTAC, that you'd be at this point? Yeah, I'd have to go back and because EDS is leading the project. Senator Harrison might not know what JTAC is. Joint Information Technology Oversight Committee. So I'll leave that to EDS. One of the things that we decided to do. So at one point there was phase one money that we got. And the idea was to kick off phase one. We started going through that RFP process. When we finished, when we're going through the RFP process, which again can take a while, we actually, the legislature also decided to fund the whole project, right? So that actually, instead of doing phases where we could end up with two vendors, we decided one, we'll get more people to bid and probably a more competitive cost bid. So we reissued the RFP for the full, I think the first round one was like 3.5 million. So we reissued the bid for 33.5 million. And so that we could compete with some of these larger states that are offering 40, 50, and $60 million to upgrade their systems. Wendy is a new member because, and the rest of us, I mean, when you talk about how creative we can be and the challenges the feds have, our creativity quite honestly, as you know, has been hampered by our inability to have a modern idea. So we have tried, as you know, to be fairly creative, particularly during the pandemic and now going forward, particularly about UI, but on many of the issues that touch on it. And our creativity has been hampered by. But there are many checks and balances in the contracting process, right? And so some of them are state requirements, some are requirements that have been put in by prior legislatures. So there are just, we are, I probably shouldn't say this, but we are one of the more complex states when it comes to contracting. So we move exceptionally slow. And we have many who have to jump through when we do large-scale contracting. I'm not saying that that's due to our detriment. It probably saves us a lot of money in the end because we do a lot of checks and balances prior to contracting, but it slows us down. And so our concern, I think, more than anything else, is whether or not there is an appropriate sense of urgency. We know as we look at some of what happened during the pandemic, that we've had some disasters and near disasters, that there is a major concern that this is going to fall over on its side. So, I mean, there's no one who would love to see a more modern system than the people at the Department of Labor. But I think our job is to keep fire with it. Absolutely. And I totally respect and understand that. So we're happy to come back and talk about that at any time. I would bring ADS and agency officials. I think it's worth doing because this is such a critical system. And we don't know if we're going to have another major problem like we had in the pandemic tomorrow. And will the department and its systems be able to react? And is there at least one person still alive who knows the code? Yes. There is one person. There is one person. And they can't retire. And you know this, and I'm more sharing just for general knowledge. It's one thing to say, hey, the system was built using cobalt code. It's another thing to say, and there's somebody who actually knows how it was designed. Because they also have to understand how unemployment insurance works. They can't just pull a cobalt coder off the street and say, now do all these things with the system. The only other thing I wanted to touch on, and we can keep going. I know we've got a few more minutes, but when we talk about priorities, you know, it came up in the legal aid letter. But I just want to articulate here on the record, you know, equal opportunity, accessibility, equity, non-discrimination. Those have been priorities for the department. Even prior to the pandemic, we are looking at a number of different ways. We've made great strides in our workforce development division to ensure we're meeting all those marks. Our focus has been on, but is also turning towards unemployment insurance to say, how are we ensuring that we are doing everything we can to ensure that we're providing our U.I. services in an equitable and accessible way. The department has developed a new position called an equal opportunity and accessibility manager, which we're actually in the process of recruiting for right now and hiring. So, again, that a lot of the things that were articulated in the legal aid letter will actually be the responsibility of this individual. We are one of the only states that doesn't have a dedicated EO manager. So that was an initiative we started talking about early on. It's just, again, when the pandemic hit, kind of, there's a requirement, the things you have to do, the things you'd like to do. And this falls probably somewhere in the middle. And so we've been moving that process forward. We've also had a lot of turnover in the department. So, you know, we were working on a communications plan in U.I. for making sure we're not only offering the services but making sure the claimants and individuals are aware that the services exist. So part of it is offering the services. The rest is also making sure there's enough awareness out there. So we have a communications plan underway. Our communications coordinator actually left and took another job. So we're in search for a new communications coordinator, actually a couple wanting workforce development as well. So just so you know, those remain and are also top priorities for us in this year. And we'll be focusing on that. We would like to meet that person when they're hired, I think, before May. From what I'm hearing you say, it's not an afterthought for the people entering the workforce. The demographics are, you know, foreign-born people of color, people who want a safe, diverse workplace. So I'm glad to hear that's a priority. I'd also highlight, too, there's specific money that all states got. They have to apply for them, but as long as the application is approved, we went through one round of application. We're going through another one with the federal government for an equity grant. So some of that money will go towards general equity work in UI, but also any enhancements to our new system to make it more accessible and equitable. There's also some additional focuses just across the entire department around equity and accessibility. That's great. Yeah, no, just a little question. Do you or can you do exit interviews or are exit interviews done? For us, yeah. Yeah, as many people as you could. So one of the other priorities, it's actually the next one on the list, was within the department, we've also set out and embarked on a mission of improving the overall culture within the department. And we established a new purpose statement and principles. And so part of that process, we're doing not only exit, some, we can do exit, intensive exit interviews for everybody, especially right now because the turnover is so high, but we offer some direct exit interviews, but they all departing staff also receive a link to an exit interview survey that they can take. And then we also started for new staff, what we're calling stay interviews, where members of our senior leadership team are actually anybody that's within the first 90 to 120 days are receiving, having a one-on-one interview with a member of the senior leadership team that's not their director. And so they are, you know, just asking them, how's it going? Do you have all the tools you need? Are you getting the direction you need? Again, part of the leaky bucket is we have people who aren't leaving and trying to sign the turnover that we're seeing. Just to tag onto that, because I was going to ask you, how does it morale? Yeah. Because you had a real morale challenge. Yeah, so morale across the state, based on the most recent employee engagement survey is low in the department, it's extremely low. I think the pandemic may be over, but the crushing factors that came with that have not subsided. So with a high vacancy rate, an extreme number of audits that are going on. I mean, I think in the past year, Cam, how many audits have we gone through? Would you say? In the past two years for unemployment insurance, let's say we've gone through at least 10. Intensive audits. And those are initiated by them? Anywhere from the required state audits, the auditor's office or the federal government. So just in the last two weeks, we launched one audit and we got a request from the Office of Inspector General at USDOL to launch another audit. So again, it's like every month or so, we're getting new audit requests. Are any of those audits related to new proper payments or fraud? Most of the audits that we have had with the Office of Inspector General and with USDOL are either directly related to fraud or have a fraud component. Yes, sir. And do you at this point have a number through the most recent year for which you have statistics of the amount of improper payments or the amount of fraud in dollars? I have information that I can share. I can take up your last six minutes with it. It is a very in-depth conversation. We could also share it by memo and then have a follow-up. Probably given the time that we have sharing by memo at least as a first step, but that's an important piece. We've had discussions before about the issue. And I know the last time that we talked particularly about fraud that was related to that big bullet that caused you to shut down. The department did not have any numbers, was not able to quantify to us where that stood. We also looked at the issue with proper fraud over time. It was something like a $55 million amount over a 10-year period that was of concern that we talked about about a year and a half ago. And I'd like to know where that has evolved since the end of that particular period as to what the trend is. We had some consulting work done focused on that entire issue and debate on the quality of that work. That's another issue. What's happened since then? And are we improving in terms of the proper payments and the identification of fraud? It was just a particular concern to me. Yes, sir. And we can pull together some detailed information and share. I will tell you that we are seeing continued significant improvement in that area. Just for general knowledge, there are a couple of different types of fraud that you'll hear us talk about. One is claimant fraud, which is an intentional act by a claimant to misrepresent a material fact in order to obtain benefits. So they might not report wages that they've earned in order to receive benefits on top of the wages there. The big one that we all are familiar with over the last year is identity theft fraud. So stolen identities from some other data breach not related to the department. Again, Equifax had a large data breach. A lot of that data ended up on the black market and was used by what we call bad actors to file for benefits in a number of states. And then there's some additional components of fraud. You'll hear the term improper payments. Improper payments does not always directly relate to fraud because improper payments could be that, again, we just improperly paid somebody based on, you know, they are doing it maliciously, right? Like more information came to light or something happened with an apartment where we issued a determination that determination got reversed on appeal. So improper payments can be overpayments of benefits or underpayment of benefits. So again, we'll cover all of those, I think, and try to articulate that. I was very insulted that you turned down my claim for my two weeks of work in the Alaskan Fish. I heard about that. I think you should have taken it. And just for those listening at home, that was a very strong experience. No, I was more concerned that whoever filed it had my social security number and my birth date. And there's all kinds of things on every one flight back account. Well, that's a pain in the neck. So you're all aware of former Governor Howard Dean filed for benefits ten times under ten different social security numbers, but he's the same name. Right? I mean, again, that's not, you know, that was fraud. The harder part is probably ensuring people that their information is getting used to file for benefits. And we're catching probably 99% of it right now because we're literally going through and auditing each claim. And we have a whole fraud team, which we've never had before. But in most cases, there's a concern that the data is coming from us. Right? So that they believe that our data is getting leaked out there. And that's how people are filing for benefits. And we have to reassure them that, you know, there's been no data breach at the Department of Labor, right? This is just somebody using your social, your date of birth, your mother's maiden name and all of that history that's out there to file. Probably not just with us, right? They're probably filing it in 50 other states. But that also is an issue regarding the data modernization, because one of the issues of data modernization is to build in tools to catch these kinds of things that would go through otherwise. Yeah, so it's tools to catch it when it gets in there. It's tools like multi-factor authentication when you're logging in to secure the system. So you're absolutely, absolutely right. So we have three minutes left and then we'll be cutting into a break that you might also have somewhere to be. We want to have you back, I think. And I guess the question is, is there anything you wanted to preview? Is there any time period where you thought it would be good to come back because you'll have a response to something or new data? And that, of course, you know, and both of you, I mean, we just didn't give you the opportunity to share report backs, things like that. I mean, I'm assuming you want us back and maybe Sarah to talk about we're enforcing those kind of initiatives. Yes, both. And you want. And you want. I mean, I understand our added benefit of $60 a week for all plans as kick, just highest. Just maximum. Just maximum. Just maximum. It would have gone to $608 and it's gone to $668 as a result. It wasn't $583. Great. So that has actually happened, which would be nice. It was nice to finally during that. We need an update on that. We need an update on aspects around it and on the trust fund and max data, which we'd love to hear, which puts us all in such a good picture for me. I was just going to add. So Matt's team will, he calls it going dark, but essentially for two months in February and March, they essentially look back over the last calendar year and true of all that data. So that may be a good time sometime either within that or at the end of that to have him come back to look at the last year in review. We also have the trust fund report that will be coming out. And so that may be a good time to have us back to talk about the UI trust. Is that mid-January? Is that after the report itself is due the 31st? Okay. So maybe first week of February. Is that too ambitious? Second week. Okay. So first week of February, we'll have you all back in the chair. Did you want to just make the report on that? Well, that's probably when we'll really open up the workforce development and labor chapters. How is that going to be? Well, I don't know how I realized, but just on the UI piece, because there's another piece on UI, the other COVID piece. Yes. PUA. Yeah, right. PUA? Yeah. We need updates on that. That pretty much did not know. Pandemic unemployment assistance. So it was one of the things that was over. Which was a huge, huge piece of our time. So that's the one even people. Yeah. So again, it was the most flexible of the federal programs that essentially said, if you were self-employed or an independent contractor, or if you could not work because of a COVID related reason, you could receive benefits through that. Okay. So I'm going to ask over this month, Senator Clarkson, if you could be working with our DOL partners throughout what else we do need to hear as a committee. Yeah. Yeah. So it'll be first of February, then you can make sure we get everything we need. And we're asking for it. I don't know. I'm not sure I can get everything we need from DOL. But I don't know about it. We will do our best. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And Cameron, congratulations on your new title and role. Sounds additive, but we're very happy to have you. Thank you. Thank you. There are one of my stints in here. Cameron was our legal counsel. That's right. That's right. Yeah. I'll try to get it. Great. We'll have more good partnerships. You have another example. We train them and the departments and agencies. Still. That's a good one.