Check out Nevada’s new, ‘much better’ jobless insurance system

Unemployment insurance officials announced an overhaul of Nevada’s public-facing system that adds self-service tools, mobile browsing and direct deposit payment options to the state’s previously aging system.

Nevada Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation officials say the unemployment modernization effort is meant to make access easier and more streamlined for the state’s estimated 24,000 claimants.

“The old system was not able to do a lot of things that this new system can do,” Director Chris Sewell said at a Tuesday media event. “It was very not user-friendly, and that’s one of the biggest reasons why we needed to do this.”

The new unemployment system now gives 24/7 access online, adds email alerts and increases security against fraud protection. It includes access to filing claims and reviewing benefits, filing appeals and other “self-service” options like a chatbot — in the form of a bighorn sheep named Benny the Bighorn — and help content made available in multiple languages, the department said.

Sewell said the agency was forced to recognize the system’s limitations during the COVID-19 pandemic, when the state’s unemployment rate reached nearly 30 percent in the early months of the state shutdown. The new tech infrastructure can now be scaled up if needed.

“The pandemic also showed that the system wasn’t scalable, and we had a lot of claims, and we had problems with getting through a lot of those claims during the pandemic, and this system will be able to handle that much, much better,” he said.

Department officials said the new system marks the completion of the second phase in a 10-year, $72 million system upgrade. Third-party contractor FAST Enterprises won the state’s contract in 2022. Nevada is now about halfway through the life of the contract, and the remaining years will be used for ongoing updates.

They began working on the first phase — which revamped the employers’ unemployment insurance portal — in November 2023 and launched it in February 2024. Contractors began working on the claimant portal’s revamp the following month.

The unemployment insurance portal went live on July 7 following a one-week blackout period for the state to transfer systems. Department officials say they avoided a large-scale media campaign about the transition and blackout period to avoid increasing the risk of fraud and other malicious attacks on the system.

The agency said it built in a grace period after those dates for affected claimants who were unable to certify their status or access the new portal. Flexibility in backdating claims or other issues remains in place until at least Aug. 7.

Sewell said more than 90 percent of claimants “successfully accessed their accounts” within the first five days of use.

Additionally, they’ve learned that the mobile-friendly changes were vital: 67 percent of claimants have accessed the system on their mobile phones.

Previously, the unemployment insurance system ran on an older style of computer programming, which led to mobile access that was formatted incorrectly and difficult to use.

Sewell told the media there were no backlogs in adjudication, or the first level of judgment on an unemployment claim. The next step, appeals, was affected by the blackout period, but Sewell said he hopes to have the department meeting U.S. Department of Labor standards in “the next few weeks.” Federal standards call for agencies to complete 60 percent of appealed cases in 30 days and 80 percent in 45 days.

Contact McKenna Ross at mross@reviewjournal.com. Follow @mckenna_ross_ on X.