California Lacks Proper Computer Systems

The government of California, where Silicon Valley resides, just seems to have the worst IT systems. Here are two examples:

LA Times (Jan 25) reports on unemployment benefits:

California officials said Monday they have confirmed that $11.4 billion in unemployment benefits paid during the COVID-19 pandemic involve fraud — about 10% of benefits paid — and another 17% are under investigation.

. . . California has paid out $114 billion in unemployment benefits since March 2020, when the state stay-at-home orders caused many businesses to close or reduce operations, putting millions out of work. Some 19 million claims have been processed by the agency.

. . . Su said part of the blame goes to the Trump administration, which she said failed to provide adequate guidance and resources to California to counter fraudulent claims, almost all of which were filed through a new federal program that provides unemployment benefits to gig workers, independent contractors and the self-employed.

Seriously, a 10% fraud problem in California related to unemployment benefits. Sure, I get that the pandemic caused a rush of claims, but that just seems like a very high number. And when you turn the percentage into a dollar amount of $11.4 billion, it actually looks funny in dark humor sort of way. I wonder if they'll send people to jail or just let them off the hook with a slap on the wrist.

And blaming the Trump administration is just laughable. Do you really need guidance not to fall for fraud claims?

Another system problem California is having is an inability to track COVID properly. In August, California Department of Public Health Director and State Health Officer Dr. Sonia Angell resigned due to data system glitches in COVID-19 reporting. Now a new problem has popped up regarding the ability to track how many vaccinations have occurred.             

LA Times (Jan 21):

Gov. Gavin Newsom urged Californians to “hold me accountable” to a goal of administering 1 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine in 10 days, but nearly two weeks later a series of data collection problems have left state officials unable to offer clear evidence of success or failure.

A spokesperson for the California Department of Public Health said Wednesday that it’s likely Newsom reached the 1 million mark over 12 days, not 10 days as promised, but noted that coding errors and data lags have hampered the state’s efforts to accurately count and publicly report how many doses are administered each day.

Now I think the LA Times is being harsh and snide by saying that California likely hit the 1 million doses in 12 days, not the 10 days that were promised. Yet, it seems like the LA Times should be harsher on the fact that California is having coding errors. We're 10 plus months into the pandemic, I would think that coding errors should be resolved at this point in time. Now, if a whole new system was having to get set up, I'd understand there being delays, but this really just sounds like a new database had to get set up.