U.S. Department of Labor

From 2022–2024, I was part of a small strategic projects team within the Office of Unemployment Insurance Modernization. We reported to the Secretary of Labor and worked closely with DOL’s Chief Information Officer and Administrator of the Office of Unemployment Insurance. We were tasked with proposing innovative solutions to support the administration’s priorities: equity, fraud prevention, and timely benefits payments.

Emergency programs like Pandemic Unemployment Assistance and Disaster Unemployment Assistance have been an economic lifeline for millions of workers in times of crisis. These programs support workers who don’t qualify for traditional unemployment, including freelance, self-employed, and gig workers. However, states lack the necessary data and tools to verify income for these populations, which leaves the programs vulnerable to fraud and improper payments.

Goals and approach

Our initial scope was exciting and nebulous with a mandate from leadership to figure out how we could truly transform the unemployment system for future emergencies. I helped narrow our focus and worked with the team to define clearer research goals:

• Understand pain points, policy requirements, and best practices for income verification

• Identify opportunities to reduce administrative burden for claimants and state workforce agencies

• Propose short- and long-term solutions to improve program integrity and support non-traditional workers

I facilitated a design sprint to identify questions, hypotheses, and assumptions from past research. We led interviews with subject matter experts at DOL, and took a snowball recruiting approach to connect with broader audiences at state and federal agencies. During our working sessions, I diagrammed the income verification process in a journey map that we refined throughout the project.

We developed concepts and prototypes to validate with state unemployment directors. I led the design work and wrote several blog posts with contributions from the team. We wanted to highlight approaches and technical solutions that could reduce churn for everyone, starting with a document management system and responsive document uploader for claimants:

We also developed a prototype to illustrate how states could automatically verify income with IRS tax data, building on a similar experience with Federal Student Aid. We paired on this quickly and built a clickable prototype with the U.S. Web Design System.

I led the synthesis and editorial process for our final recommendations report, working closely with our policy director and external communications team to ensure the information was accurate and engaging.

Results

We presented our findings to the White House, the IRS, and the president’s chief tax advisor. DOL used our research to respond to a formal request for executive action from the Government Accountability Office.

We shared our findings with state and federal agencies to support future investments in data sharing and document management systems. We also published our prototypes and best practices online so state agencies and innovation teams can build on our work. Learn more in the project archives →