Summary: Earlier this year, the CARES Act provided billions of dollars in new unemployment payments to Americans whose jobs were affected by the pandemic. But it also created a huge IT challenge for state unemployment agencies who had to quickly retrofit their systems to administer the pandemic payments. A volunteer group of IT experts, called U.S. Digital Response, sprang into action to help states out, but almost immediately, they ran into a problem common across the public sector: the IT systems were closed, proprietary, and very hard to adapt to new problems. Waldo Jaquith is a member of U.S. Digital Response and a veteran of GSA’s 18-F organization. He talked with the Federal Drive about those challenges, and how agencies can prevent them in the future. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
