Unemployment claim computer system disruption in Colorado
The state’s computerized phone system for unemployment claims crashed, causing long hold times and significant delays recently:
Problems with CUBline on-line, where people either register an initial claim or update existing claims in order to continue collecting unemployment, came to the department’s attention on Sunday. But the computer crashes and time-outs could have started earlier than that, said Department of Labor spokesman Bill Thoennes.
The system was apparently up and running again as of yesterday, but the cause of the failure has not been found yet.
Buggy computer system delays food stamps in Denver
The Denver Post reports that problems with a computer system are seriously slowing down the processing of food stamp applications.
For five years, CBMS — a database that processes applications for help, including Medicaid, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and food stamps — has been problematic.
At first, the system chucked some applicants out while overpaying others. State officials remedied that but had to reimburse the federal government more than $9 million in December for the mistakes.
Counties also complained that CBMS is nonintuitive, that it takes 45 minutes to enter data for one application and that, when moving from one screen to the other, things like names and addresses have to be re-entered.
It sounds bad enough for small numbers of applications. The recession has however brought a significantly increased demand, which just exacerbates the problem.
This is a serious problem and the state is putting some serious money into fixing it:
Last fall, the state awarded a $90,000 contract to the system’s creator, Electronic Data Systems, to study how to simplify and quicken the program for counties and clients. A report was issued to the Joint Budget Committee, but it didn’t go anywhere because the state switched vendors.
A new $48.6 million four-year contract with Deloitte Consulting will include creating a Web-based application system in nine months, state officials say. This will enable people anywhere to apply for help, logging on from libraries, home or senior centers.
It will be interesting to follow along and see whether this project gets completed or what will be available after those nine months.
Software flaw apparently prevented tornado warning alerts
As reported recently by The Coloradoan, a Fort Collins computer system failed to alert tens of thousands of people and businesses about a tornado warning earlier this week:
An estimated 100,000 phone numbers and e-mail addresses did not receive the notification from the city that would have alerted those in the south-central part of the city.
A software error has since been identified:
Officials said Wednesday the system identifies geographic areas to be notified but was unable to deliver the warnings when the areas overlapped.
Kimberly Culp, a spokeswoman for the Larimer Emergency Telephone Authority, said an employee entering data for the areas created the overlap, but the computer didn’t issue an error message until the worker tried to send out the alert and failed.
She said the worker tried to fix the mistake but by the time officials figured out the problem there was no need to send an alert anymore.
The system was developed by Glendale, Calif.-based Everbridge Inc. Larimer County agencies paid $150,000 to start the system plus $95,000 a year to be able to send out an unlimited number of alerts.
Culp said the county is working with Everbridge to make sure the computers send an error message as soon as a worker enters overlapping data.
It sounds like there are least one of two issues here:
- The software does not properly combine overlapping geographic regions.
- No error message is displayed to inform the user about a data input problem.
Nothing much happened here, this time. The issue is of course a tricky one though. As this example showed, by the time the problem was discovered, it was too late and there was basically no need any longer for an alert. There is little room for delays here.
