<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2020/10/1602598559752.png" alt="Kansas Department of Labor acting secretary Ryan Wright says the unemployment benefit backlogs are thinning, the call center gridlock appears resolved and plans are under development to overhaul the agency's IT network. (Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector)" />
 <figcaption>Kansas Department of Labor acting secretary Ryan Wright says the unemployment benefit backlogs are thinning, the call center gridlock appears resolved and plans are under development to overhaul the agency's IT network. (Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector)</figcaption>
 </figure>By TIM CARPENTER <a href="https://kansasreflector.com/2020/10/13/kansas-labor-department-digs-out-of-help-line-quagmire-reduces-claim-backlog/">Kansas Reflector</a>TOPEKA — When Ryan Wright 
was tapped by Gov. Laura Kelly to take over the Kansas Department of 
Labor in June, coronavirus had ruthlessly gutted the state’s economy and
 overwhelmed the agency responsible for delivering timely financial aid 
to people thrown out of work.The unprecedented wave of 
joblessness meant people were unable to get through to labor department 
call centers. The agency’s creaky computer system showed its age. A 
backlog of claims kept expanding. Politicians eager to highlight 
weaknesses in the Kelly administration had a heyday. Then, the labor 
department tried to claw back incorrect payments and some of those 
transactions overdrafted unemployed Kansans’ bank accounts. It cost 
labor secretary Delia Garcia her job, and ushered in the Wright era.In an interview, Wright 
said the addition of full-time and temporary staff and a series of IT 
network patches had helped stabilize the system. He also said his office
 had blocked about 55,000 attempts at fraud. Just as no magical remedy 
for COVID-19 has emerged, neither has a silver bullet for what 
challenges the labor department.“I used to hear a lot 
about people not getting through, not getting responses,” Wright said. 
“Right now, we’re hearing a lot about identity theft. I heard from a 
conservative legislator the other day, ‘Thank you. We can tell you’re 
doing stuff there.' ”<figure>
 <img src="https://media.eaglewebservices.com/public/2020/10/1602598614968.jpeg" alt="Ryan Wright, acting secretary of the Kansas Department of Labor, says the agency is thinning the backlog of jobless claims and blocked 55,000 attempts to fraudulently claim aid during the COVID-19 pandemic. (Submitted)" />
 <figcaption>Ryan Wright, acting secretary of the Kansas Department of Labor, says the agency is thinning the backlog of jobless claims and blocked 55,000 attempts to fraudulently claim aid during the COVID-19 pandemic. (Submitted)</figcaption>
 </figure>For the Kansas Reflector, Wright delved into the past, present and future of department’s unemployment benefit operation.The Kansas 
unemployment trust fund had $900 million at outset of the pandemic. If 
it goes dry, the state can borrow from the federal government. What is 
the fund’s status?“It was very healthy. 
We’ve been, of course, drawing down on that. We expect it will go 
insolvent after the first of the year. As of about a month ago … we were
 just hitting kind of where we were at when the great recession started,
 that $600 million mark.”Are identity-theft 
crooks concentrating on the Pandemic Unemployment Assistance program in 
Kansas? That’s the one offering benefits to self-employed people, 
independent contractors and others not eligible for regular UI aid.“To date, we’ve stopped 
55,000 fraudulent claims. It’s all targeted to the PUA program. To give 
you some idea of the scope, the U.S. Department of Labor’s office of 
inspector general estimates that this is costing taxpayers $8 billion 
nationally. Kansas is not out of the norm. This is absolutely hitting 
every state right now.”What have you done to thwart identity theft?“We’ve doubled the size of
 the fraud teams. We’ve put in place on the back end a number of digital
 tools — I’m intentionally being vague about that — to help verify 
people’s identity to stop malicious fraud activity. When you’re talking 
about these numbers, I’d by lying if I said some of them didn’t get 
through the system.”When can you go public with scope of the PUA problem?“We are doing an audit of 
our system right now. We may not know until close to the end of the 
year, but we’re going to know how much has been paid out in fraud. The 
costs of that are all borne by the federal government. It doesn’t come 
out of the state trust fund.”OK, how big is the backlog of regular unemployment insurance claims?“When I accepted this job 
we had around 26,000 backlogged claims within the regular UI system. 
Part of what I’ve been working on is to increase our bandwidth. We’ve 
done that in part by bringing in additional resources from Accenture and
 others. With their help we’ve been able to cut that number of 
backlogged claims down to 12,000. We expect we’re going to be able to 
reduce that even further, if not eliminate it, by the end of this 
month.”How much new staff has been added to deal with phone bank issues?“At the height of this, 
when the agency was getting 1.5 million call attempts a day, there were 
around 25 employees answering phones. Now, we’re at around 100 KDOL 
employees. We’ve got 150 Accenture folks on the phones. Last week, I 
think the longest anybody was on hold in our call system was 20 
minutes.”How are you doing with
 the Lost Wages Assistance program offering $300 per week in 
supplemental aid for people who received jobless benefits from Aug. 1 to
 Sept. 5?“Because there are so many
 programs and so many acronyms floating around, it’s caused a ton of 
confusion. We proactively reached out to everybody who received a 
benefit from us in the time that fit into that critieria. We paid out 
right away $6.7 million to 25,000 people. We’ve had, since we opened 
that, 110,000 Kansans certify that they lost their jobs due to COVID.”The labor department wants to upgrade the IT system. What’s the latest?“The agency had actually 
started this process before the pandemic hit. We’re finishing up that 
modernization plan. We will have that ready to present to the 
Legislature … by the end of the year. We’re trying to be smart about 
this so what we’re doing now to stabilize the system hopefully will be 
transferable when we move to a new system.”What about the cost estimate of $30 million or more?“I’m thinking what will 
happen is that you’ll have some phased in with X amount of dollars in 
the first three years and X amount of dollars in the out years. We’re 
hoping that when the stimulus package passes Congress there will be 
money.”Tim Carpenter has reported on Kansas for 35 years. He covered the Capitol for 16 years at the Topeka Capital-Journal and previously worked for the Lawrence Journal-World and United Press International.

Kan. Labor Dept. digs out of help-line quagmire, reduces claim backlog