(Simulblogged at universalhub.com.)
The Commonwealth of Massachusetts has a convoluted(*) unemployment insurance system, under which employers are required to make various quarterly and annual filings and quarterly payments involving at least two different state agencies.
This system is administered by the Department of Unemployment Assistance (DUA), who decided to replace their old, paper-based system with a Web-based system called QUEST (“Quality Unemployment System Transformation”). The DUA promised QUEST would bring countless improvements: one-stop shopping, filings for all agencies in one place, faster filings, less wasted paper, reduced printing and postage costs, reduced data entry costs, no more data transcription errors, etc., etc. You’ve no doubt heard it all before.
QUEST went live at the beginning of 2010. As of the go-live date, the usage of QUEST for all employer unemployment insurance transactions was mandatory; paper filings were no longer permitted. I.e., the DUA went straight from paper filings only to on-line filings only, with no transition period or overlap.(**)
It would be an understatement to say that the QUEST go-live is not going well; in fact, it is a disaster. (more…)
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