The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), Employment and Training Administration (ETA) is awarding more than $11 million to the Hawaiʻi Department of Labor and Industrial Relations (DLIR) to update its Unemployment Insurance (UI) system.

The UI Information Technology modernization grants, made possible by the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), will be used to update state UI technology systems to ensure they are user-friendly, accurate in determining and distributing unemployment benefits, and better able to prevent UI-related fraud.

During the pandemic, historic job losses worsened existing issues in the unemployment insurance system, as states had problems processing unemployment insurance claims due to outdated IT systems, causing delayed payments, increases in fraud, and substantial disparities in benefit payments according to race and ethnicity.

As part of ARPA passed in 2021, DOL was provided $2 billion for Unemployment Insurance Modernization with the goals to detect and prevent fraud, ensure timely payment of benefits, and to promote equitable access to unemployment insurance resources. Made possible through ARPA, the funding will help to ensure that recipients can adopt new strategies for updating their unemployment insurance systems, better protect against fraud, and make the systems easier to maintain and use.