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Kansas unemployment system to temporarily close, add new security to combat fraud

By Madison Parry

The Kansas Department of Labor is taking action as the state continues to experience a surge in fraudulent unemployment claims. The department announced it will be taking the unemployment benefit servers offline this weekend to upgrade the security system in an effort to reduce fraud.

The Kansas Department of Labor will launch a new identity theft system on Saturday, according to a Wednesday news release from the department.

“Since the start of the pandemic, the Kansas Department of Labor has been fighting two battles – processing a record number of unemployment claims with 40-year old IT systems and a record number of fraud,” Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly said. “These upgrades will identify and stop the flood of fraudulent claims Kansas and states across the country have been fighting against, so the team at the Department of Labor will have more time to help unemployed Kansans.

Installation of the new system will affect operations beginning at 2 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 30 though the morning of Tuesday, Feb. 2, according to the release.

The department will hold regular unemployment programs but will not pay anything out from Friday until Tuesday. This will not affect federal unemployment benefits.

“We are going to hold, at some point, benefit payments only for regular unemployment. It won’t impact federal programs until after we get this implementation done,” Senior Advisor to the Secretary of Labor Ryan Wright said, ensuring that everyone will get paid back if they were supposed to be paid over those three to four days.

“This is a critical new tool that we will have in our arsenal to combat and mitigate identity theft,” Wright said. “All those letters that we’ve been talking about that people have been receiving, employers that are getting the same letters, these benefit notices, this should eliminate that or greatly reduce.”

The new system will require everyone in the state’s unemployment system to verify their identity by answering specific questions followed by a two-factor authentication login. Users will be required to complete the two-factor authentication every time they access their account.

A partnership with LexisNexis, a corporation providing computer-assisted legal and business research as well as risk management services, will deploy identity verification software for unemployment insurance accounts and claims.