Florida is spending up to $110 million to back up its failed unemployment website

Florida’s last-minute scramble to beef up its broken unemployment system comes with an astonishingly high price tag: nearly $100 million so far.

In the last few weeks, state officials have signed contracts with two companies just to handle the flood of calls to the system, records show.

One contract, worth up to $79 million, is with TelaForce, LLC in Fort Walton Beach to provide at least 1,000 call takers and 33 supervisors, who must all pass background checks. The other, worth up to $17 million, is with Virginia’s Faneuil, Inc. to provide 250 call takers.cAnd a third contract worth up to $13 million was signed Thursday with United Data Technologies in Miramar for another 250 people.

Department of Economic Opportunity spokeswoman Tiffany Vause said late Thursday that the contracts allow the state to quickly increase and decrease the number of call takers. The contracts are only for a year, and officials don’t believe they’ll need to max out each contract.

The extraordinary sum would be $32 million more than officials spent to overhaul the state’s unemployment website seven years ago — and an indicator of how desperate they are to tackle the crippling backlog of unemployment claims.

Gov. Ron DeSantis has vowed “all hands on deck” and told the Department of Economic Opportunity to do whatever it takes to resolve the emergency.

Even after being approved for unemployment benefits, Florida’s jobless can’t collect | Opinion

The department, which operates the unemployment system, announced a new website on Wednesday night. Unlike the old site, the new site is mobile-friendly, allowing people to apply on their phone or tablet. But it’s not a substitute for the old site.

Since mid-March, the state’s unemployment website — the primary way to file a claim — has been broken by the workload. The state’s call center is supposed to be the backup to the website, but it has fared no better.

In recent weeks, the center has answered just 2 percent of the calls it has received, according to the contracts.

In the last week of March, the rate was even worse. Of the 864,313 calls to the department’s hotline that week, just 8,395 were answered — less than 1 percent.

Nearly 90 percent of callers were not able to connect at all, the contracts state. Those who were able to connect spent, on average, more than 6½ hours on hold.

TelaForce’s contract states the company will handle a variety of calls, including resetting personal identification numbers, which the department says make up a third of all calls. Floridians who have applied for unemployment in the past, but can’t remember their PINs to log into the site, have had to call to have it reset. Without that reset, they can’t log in to apply.

The department did not answer questions about the contracts, including whether they were being paid for with federal or state dollars.

While states around the country have struggled under the crush of unemployment claims, Florida’s situation is on the verge of an economic disaster.

Officials are desperate to put checks into the hands of Floridians, but it appears many will have to wait weeks. On Monday, Department of Economic Opportunity Executive Director Ken Lawson said they were aiming to process 80,000 of the more than 560,000 outstanding applications this week.

Over the weekend, the state upgraded the system, adding 72 servers. But it could still be weeks before people see unemployment checks.

In Miami-Dade, the county has printed old-fashioned paper applications and handed them out at 26 libraries. The reaction was stunning: On Wednesday, the first day the applications were available countywide, libraries handed out 29,351 forms.

Any Floridian who hasn’t been able to successfully apply for unemployment benefits yet should now use this new website to sign up: www.floridajobs.org/raapplication.

While early reviews show that applicants have not been met with the error messages and other glitches plaguing the old site, the new site went down within a few hours of its launch.

The new site is essentially a mobile-friendly electronic form and not a substitute for the old site. State workers are taking the electronic forms and entering them into the old site. Applicants will still have to use the old site to modify their application, however.

The state on Wednesday also rolled out a mobile-friendly version of its coronavirus financial aid page, which has links to frequently asked questions and the paper applications for individuals and businesses. The new mobile-friendly site is www.floridajobs.org/COVID-19.

Before applying for unemployment, state officials recommend you first gather your Social Security number, driver’s license or state ID number, and this employment information for the last 18 months for each employer:

▪ Employer ID - FEIN number (this is found on your W2 or 1099 tax form), if available.

▪ Employer name (as it appears on a pay stub), address, and phone number.

▪ First and last day of work.

▪ Gross earnings (before taxes are taken out) covering the last 18 months.

▪ Reason for separation.

Anyone who falls under one of the following categories should also have this information on hand before applying:

▪ Not a U.S. citizen: Alien Registration Number or other work authorization form.

▪ Military employee: Copy of your DD-214 Member 4; If you do not have the Member 4, then a copy of your Member 2-7 may be used.

▪ Federal employee: SF-8 or SF-50.

▪ Union member: Union name, hall number, and phone number.