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Sept. 21, 2021Topeka, Kan. |  By: AP

Kansas passed on earlier plan to upgrade unemployment system

unemployment

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) - A software company urged Kansas to upgrade its computer system for handling claims for unemployment benefits but the state didn't heed that advice five years before a flood of fraudulent claims during the coronavirus pandemic.

The Topeka Capital-Journal reports that Oracle proposed in 2015 that the Kansas Department of Labor do the upgrade to prevent fraud. 

Department leaders in then-Republican Gov. Sam Brownback's administration concluded much of an upgrade could be handled in-house.

But an IT architect who worked on a Department of Labor modernization project canceled in 2011 said accepting Oracle's proposal would have minimized fraud. An recent audit suggests Kansas may have paid $700 million to fraudsters.