Unemployment Insurance Program

UI Integrity Action Plan (IAP)

State: Tennessee

Federal Fiscal Year: 2019

Accountable Agency Official(s):

• Commissioner - Burns Phillips
• Deputy Commissioner - Dustin Swayne
• Employment Security Assistant Commissioner - Rusty Felts
• Assistant Administrator - Jason Cecil
• Director of Claim Operations - Jeremy Colbert
• Director of Recovery - Robin Betts
• Director of Employer Accounts Operations - Mark Howell
• Director of Appeals - John Trentes
• Director of REA/RESA - Nicholas Bishop
• Director of UI Integrity - Chris Russ

State: Tennessee

Federal Fiscal Year: 2020

Accountable Agency Official(s): (Enter the name and title of the staff person who is accountable for reducing UI improper payments.)

Summary: (Provide a summary of the plan that the state has designed. The summary should include outreach efforts planned by the agency to inform all UI and workforce staff, and employers of the strategic plan to ensure everyone understands the importance of maintaining program integrity.)

Tennessee has developed a UI Integrity Strategic Plan for FY 2019-2020 that includes the following strategies:

Tennessee implemented the Training, Research and Compliance Unit (TRAC) in April of 2017. This unit is continuing to develop system wide training for Unemployment Division. This unit will ensure that the Division is receiving proper training including detection of improper payments. This unit will ensure the Division is compliant with State and USDOL policy and procedures. This unit will prepare refresher training for Claim Operations personnel to include topics on how to identify and document overpayments and educating claimants on reporting wages and separations. A need has been identified to provide consistent instructions and messaging to claimants to ensure wages and separations are reported properly during the claimants benefit year. Periodically onsite training or webinar will be conducted for claim center personnel as well as provide training documentation. The Unit is reaching out to all employers in TN to register them in the GUS system. This will increase efficiency in processing of claims information including accurate and timely separation information. We follow up this outreach by sending via mail and e-mail a copy of the Employer’s Unemployment Guide for JOBS4TN.GOV. TN is currently discussing plans to add more SIDES third party employers. We are currently adding several employers to our claims system GUS that utilize SIDES. The GUS system provides the ability to process correspondence and receive responses from SIDES employer.

Continue to cultivate a sense of ownership for program integrity within the entire UI system by continuing to enhance the state’s cross-functional UI Integrity process to assess the state’s UI integrity functions and make recommendations for continuous improvement. The agency will conduct this through continued communication through the directors of each unit. Tennessee had a task force in the past but previous management discontinued the task force. Currently TN has re-established the Integrity Task Force. Current plans are to meet quarterly to discuss areas of improvement and alternatives solutions to improve improper payment rate. Task Force consists of UI Assistant Administrator, TRAC team managers, BAM manager, Claims Center Director, and UI Integrity Director. The team will report solutions to the Assistant Commissioner over UI.

Continue to use e-mails, electronic newsletters and staff meetings to encourage all UI and workforce staff to understand how their jobs connect to UI integrity and to solicit their recommendations for solutions to address UI improper payments. We will also promote the use of the UI Integrity Community of Practice web site and UI Integrity Center of Excellence. TN has identified a need to continue training of staff for a better understanding of processes that affect improper payments. We will be sending BPC auditors to training through the Integrity Center in September 2018 to improve knowledge and functionality of our auditors and will also consult them for future training for UI staff. TRAC team will continue training on issues related to the improper payments. This will include detection of separation issue, advising claimants on proper certification process and improving non-monetary statement taking.

Tennessee marketing team and Claims Operation Director attends Workforce Employer Outreach Committee Meetings as well as meeting with employers who have mass layoffs. At these meetings the representatives discuss the process of unemployment to employers. Tennessee also uses the website to guide employer to the SIDES system. We also have instructions on our website for GUS registration. This give them better access to their claims and will enhance their ability to get better and timely information to the agency. The TRAC team is calling EVERY employer within the state of Tennessee to explain our Jobs4TN.gov website and the benefits of them activating their account. A Jobs4TN.gov User Guide is sent by mail (hard copy) and e-mail (electronic copy) to each employer that is contacted. Tennessee will look to increase outreach to employer targeting programs that target the improper payment rate and also would be open to suggestions from USDOL.

Main root cause for work search was claimant inability to produce adequate job searches or produce them at all. Claimants were allowed to certify and did not have to provide the work search prior to payment. Currently the GUS system required the claimant to either be exempt from the work search, have a reportable service through workforce services or provides three work searches prior to certification. If claimant cannot provide this an issue is created and determination issued denying the claim until it is provided.

Main issue and root causes of separation issues were because of the backlog of UI claims work load through the spring of 2017. Tennessee had to pay first adjudicate later per the Java ruling which increased the number of claims that were paid improperly. We no longer had this backlog and hope to see a decrease in the separation category. We reorganized our BPC work flow to utilize the BAT team concept in the spring of 2018 to increase productivity with the new hire crossmatches. This will enable us to work more and work them quicker. This plan we hope will decrease the number of weeks a claimant will receive improper payments. Agency will also be participating on online training offered by NASWA Integrity Center for adjudication and claims agents. This will help with proper identification of separation issues and decision making on claims. The agency is also reworking certification questions to detect separations better by singling out the questions “Have you been laid off, quit, or discharged from a job during the week. Anticipated completion of this is December of 2018. The agency also provides online videos and instruction on reporting separations from employment. Claimants must also read and acknowledge they understand they must report separations before they can proceed to the certification process.

Main issues and root causes of benefit year earnings is related to the current certification questions. The earnings question is not separate from the work question. If a claimant answers no to working then they are not presented the wage question. TN will be working with Geographic Solutions to improve the certification questions. Each question will state the dates in which the certification applies. The questions will be stand alone on different screens to focus is just on that one question. New hire data will be cross matched and presented at the time of certification if the claimant has a new hire date with in that week of certification. The anticipated completion date of this is June of 2019. Agency also provides online videos to educate claimants on certification process. There is also written instructions certifications and reporting your earnings. Claimants must also read and acknowledge they understand they must report earnings before they can proceed to the certification process.

Continue to conduct analysis of quarterly BAM data to identify trends in root causes and continue to keep management aware of possible trends in improper payments through the periodic reporting of BAM data. BAM manager supplies Director of Integrity with monthly reports on paid case errors. This enables the agency to pinpoint increases in a root causes as well as detect or determine what is causing the improper payments.

Engage in a business process analysis know as Lean events to identify areas of weakness and to set the stage for reengineering processes that will improve program integrity and performance. BPC support staff held an event in the May of 2018 which is showing an improvement to processes. BPC will continue to utilize this process going forward to increase efficiencies

Continue the Eligibility Review Interview (ERI) program in which claimants will be more accurately assigned Claimant Characteristic Codes based upon a review of work and layoff history from the same employer. This program will flag claimants who have reached their return to work date and verify the continuing eligibility of all claimants.

Examine SBR opportunities as well as penalty and interest collections for fraud detection and prevention solutions.

Continue to use the Treasury Offset Program (TOP) to recover improper payments.

Continues use of standalone Recovery unit poised to addresses the recovery of overpaid benefits. Unit will utilize multiple strategies such as liens, garnishments, correspondence, and out bound telephone calls to those that have an outstanding debt to the agency. There are also utilizing a change to write off law that allows us more time to collect the debt. Recovery unit will also partner with Lexis Nexis to implement Business Data Enrichment Solution. This process will help with recovery of benefits by searching for alternative addresses and contact information. It will also look at assets to determine the claimant ability to pay back benefits. This process will give us another tool to go after those claimants that have not updated contact information as well it will determine their ability to pay back the benefits based on assets.

The Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development plans to continue existing UI Integrity related projects towards more integrated system enhancements which will not only provide the same functionality and achieve the same intended results of better enabling us to prevent, detect and recover improper payments but which will also address many UI performance issues as well.

Enhanced Employment Service Registration

Enhanced Job Service/UI Systems interface

Implementing State-Specific Solutions

SAS Fraud Prevention/Detection Solution Software

Lexis Nexis Fraud prevention system

Tennessee will be participating in a Lexis Nexis pilot program called Risk Intelligent Network. This system will allow TN to defend against a spectrum of costly threats from identity fraud. They system will use multiple data sources from both internal agency data as well as large-scale external identity data sets to address risky identities and patterns. We hope to begin this pilot by the end of the fourth quarter 2018.

Continue improving the new benefits systems GUS from Geographic solutions. This will increase early detection, prevention, and recovery of improper payments. The Agency along with Geographic Solutions will be upgrading certification process in during fiscal year 2019. This will improve questions for claimants. Each question will be in a single page format instead of having all questions on one page. If an issue is detected they system will present fact finding questions at that time. Each question will have the date range pertaining to that question in the body of the question. Increase notifications prior to certification, thought popup windows, to report separations and wages earned during the week. Certifications will be cross matched with new hire information and present new hire information at the time of certification to address. This will display the new hire employer as well as the hire date of the employer. The system will ask of this information is correct and expect a yes or no answer. If the claimant answers no they will be asked to provide an explanation on why there were not hired and working there at this time.

Because of the different strategies and multitude of actions included in this UI Integrity Strategic Plan and the varying implementation timelines involved, it is extremely difficult to establish precise performance targets for any given point in time. Our overall goal is to reduce improper payments due to BYE and Separation issues by 50% within one year of the implementation of this plan and we expect to be able to measure our success along the way based on a continuous and sustained decrease in the quarterly improper payment rates by cause as measured from our BAM sample data.

Instructions for the following section: In each individual section below, enter a Root Cause, from above, and the top three focused Strategies that will be employed to correct or reduce this cause of overpayments. An additional line is available in each section to include other significant strategies that target the root cause.

Root Cause 1: Separation Issues

Root Cause 3: Work Search

Root Cause 2: Benefit Year Earnings