The Department of Economic Opportunity's executive director, Dane Eagle, talked to Spectrum News about a new glitch in CONNECT that locks accounts and how the agency plans to fix Florida's broken unemployment system.

"We took a position of looking at the process and how we can make that more efficient," said Eagle. "Whether that's the I.T. technology or some of the policies that might be burdensome or extra red tape." ​

Eagle is asking the legislature for $72 million over the next two years to build a new CONNECT system.

"That's for strictly modernization and that's going to make sure it's cloud based, make sure the system is user friendly and make sure that it's modular," he said. "We're working closely with the House and the Senate. They're going to wrap up here on Friday. So, we're very interested to see where we land."

The latest CONNECT glitch causing users trouble re-locks a person's account every time they claim weeks.

"Unfortunately, the people that are dealing with that, our heart goes out to them. We're working on it," said Eagle. "In the meantime, we've setup an automated process where if you get locked overnight the automated process should go in and unlock you, but we're going through that on a daily basis." ​

Last month, an Inspector General review of the DEO's problem plagued system was released. The report states the CONNECT system was poorly positioned to handle the unprecedented claims during the pandemic because it was never stress tested properly.

The 2011 contract between the DEO and Deloitte, the vendor at the time, called for a minimum of 200,000 concurrent users but Deloitte only stress tested for 4,200 users. 

Eagle took over the agency last September. The director admits the stress test was a problem but also said nobody could've predicted the overwhelming demand that came with the pandemic.

"Our focus has been moving forward, how can we fix that now? Yeah, it wasn't stress tested at the level that maybe it should've," he said. "The highest we had in the recession, claims per week, was 40,000. Then the pandemic hit and it was 500,000 claims per week. So, even if you stress test back then during the great recession we wouldn't been able to know that the pandemic would've had this kind of demand."​

The Inspector General review recommended solution was the DEO should fully document future I.T. system capacity requirements and expected utilization in system testing plans and test results. Agencies should also better monitor what they are getting from the vendor, build an escape plan and financial penalties for noncompliance.