Trae Rahill, Chief Executive Officer
OKLAHOMA CITY — The Oklahoma Employment Security Commission achieved several milestones this year, Chief Executive Officer Trae Rahill said recently.
Among those accomplishments was the launch of the updated VerifyOK platform. The revamped online ID verification system has “made the claims process more efficient while also assisting in the prevention of fraudulent activity,” Rahill said.
OESC launched the first version of an identity verification tool in 2020, which was instituted by former OESC executive director Shelley Zumwalt during the pandemic to help the agency fight a tsunami of fraudulent claims. Since that time, OESC’s IT teams have worked to create a completely customized tool “built from the ground up to better support the agency’s needs,” Rahill said.
“This milestone in OESC’s digital transformation journey is just one of many efforts to improve services” the agency provides to Oklahomans, he added.
Other milestones in 2022 included:
• OESC was one of only seven states to receive an Unemployment Insurance Navigator Grant from the U.S. Department of Labor. Oklahoma was awarded $227,038 to embed a Career Coordinator in the Oasis Fresh Market.
The Oasis Project is a community nonprofit that serves north Tulsa, which historically has experienced high unemployment rates — five times the statewide average — and high poverty levels. Until the Oasis Fresh Market opened in 2021, the area was also classified as a food desert.
The grant is financing an embedded worker to the Oasis Fresh Market, giving the community direct assistance in applying for and receiving unemployment insurance benefits, as well as training and reemployment opportunities.
Administered by the Labor Department’s Employment and Training Administration, Unemployment Insurance Navigator grants allow community partners in each state to conduct outreach and provide resources and training to marginalized communities.
• OESC also was awarded $100,000 Workforce Innovation Network Grant through the National Governors Association. “These dollars were instrumental in building capacity to connect rural Oklahomans to teleworking jobs across the state,” Rahill said.
• OESC local offices hosted more than 190 hiring events across the state this year to connect candidates with employers. “This helps to boost local economies and workforce needs,” he said.
• Oklahoma’s unemployment rate has remained below the national average every month since before the pandemic, Rahill said. The state unemployment rate in November was 3.4%, compared to 3.7% nationally.
For the filing week that ended Dec. 10, first-time unemployment claims numbered 1,207, which was 114 fewer than the week before, according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
• OESC leadership rolled out a new mission, vision and values for the agency. The entire agency is aligning core functions to newly established goals across the agency’s many services, Rahill said. “This work will be analyzed and distributed internally and to external partners, such as employers and legislators.”
Plans for a comprehensive digital transformation of OESC “to help the organization run more efficiently for citizens, employers and the state” was announced on Sept. 29, 2020, by Zumwalt.
“The ‘BT40’ project is a complete business process transformation that will touch every aspect of the agency, not just software and hardware,” she said.
One of the major problems with which the OESC had to cope was its antiquated mainframe, which dated from 1978. “It’s a system that you navigate by pushing F9 and F6,” Zumwalt lamented. “That’s the engine that runs the claims process for this agency.”
The technology that OESC was using in March 2021 “was new in 1981,” Zumwalt said. “It processes claims, and all our payments go through it. We can’t process claims at night because that’s when it’s running batch files.”
“The mainframe is part of the digital transformation, so that is ongoing,” an OESC spokesperson told Southwest Ledger in October. However, the agency did transition to laptop computers/new desktop computers more than a year ago, the spokesperson said. “Additionally, we’ll launch the Employer Portal in the coming weeks/months,” she said.
The transformation project has included streamlining and modernizing agency systems for claims and submission processing, benefits renewal, appeals, risk management, employer claims and account management, reporting and reemployment.
The “BT40 project” is estimated to cost $40 million to $45 million. It is being financed with federal Coronavirus Aid Relief and Economic Security Act funds and the OESC’s technology fund, an agency spokesman said. “No state funds or Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund dollars are being used on this project.”