Editorial: The baffling delay in fixing the state's unemployment system

In 2020, Pennsylvania — like the rest of the country — experienced an employment crisis.

When the coronavirus pandemic hit and many businesses shut down or scaled back operations to comply with mandated restrictions, jobs were the first casualty. By May, about 2 million Pennsylvanians were out of work. By the end of the year, the state’s job market was still among the most affected.

That didn’t just mean that thousands were trying to stay healthy. It meant that they were also trying to navigate the state’s unemployment system.

What they discovered was a process that has needed radical reform for years. It is confusing to file online. If you call for help, you face neverending waits for an answer. But those waits are nothing compared to the delays some have endured for their checks.

On Thursday, the Department of Labor and Industry announced the new system will launch on June 8. So did it really take the state a whole year of overwhelming need to figure out that the system was irreparably broken?

No. It’s been at least four years.

Although attempts to fix the state’s 40-year-old computer system have been made since 2006, it was in 2017 that a lawsuit still being waged in court spelled out the problems. The state sued tech giant IBM, claiming the 11-year-old contract — which had expired in 2013 — was unfulfilled and the company “repeatedly failed to live up to these commitments.”

Carnegie Mellon University found problems with IBM’s design and implementation and recommended the state walk away. It did, which was the right call.

What is ridiculous is that it took a world- renowned tech school to reach that conclusion and another eight years for a new system to be implemented.

Thousands of people use the system every day. It isn’t just an optional thing like using a travel website to book a hotel room where you can pick a different provider if you have problems. It is something people rely on to pay their rent and feed their kids. It can be the difference between your lights staying on or getting turned off.

Forty years is longer than anyone would let a car or computer, or a roof or a refrigerator or really anything go without fixing it. It is good to know that people only will have another two months to go before Geographic Solutions, Inc., of Palm Harbor, Fla., brings its $30.2 million system online, but it is inexcusable that it has been allowed to take this long.