nigelbro
commented
8 years ago I am having this same issue currently as a software engineer and it is very confusing and leads to many people being denied who do it on their own
Open WERUreo opened 8 years ago
nigelbro
commented
8 years ago I am having this same issue currently as a software engineer and it is very confusing and leads to many people being denied who do it on their own
brotherjack
commented
8 years ago Ditto. I too am in this situation. However, I would point out that I highly suspect that the CONNECT system was designed to be confusing, intimidating, demeaning, and insulting. This is precisely why this is such a good project idea.
Here is something to look into, an Orlando Sentinel article references this report by the National Employment Law Project.
Unemployment insurance is a very basic protection from the instabilities of market capitalism. No one should be made to feel ashamed or demeaned for having to use it. There is no excuse for the richest country in the world to not provide such a basic protection to it's workers.
Short description of the idea (140 character tweet):
Requesting unemployment benefits online is a difficult task that should be fixed.
What is your project concept or idea? What challenge or opportunity will it solve?
The Florida Department of Economic Opportunity's CONNECT web site is supposed to be Floridians' portal for reemployment assistance. The trouble is, the portal is very difficult to navigate and understand. I recently had the displeasure of attempting to request unemployment benefits from CONNECT, and I found the process very confusing, due in part to a poorly organized web site.
My idea for this project is in keeping with a couple of the national Code for America challenges, namely citizen onboarding. The hope would be that by understanding what is wrong with the current user experience, someone can try to improve it.
Who will benefit from your project? Describe the humans at the center of the problem - who are they?
How would they benefit? Can you tell their story?
Do you have photos of them? Or quotes?
I can only speak of my own experience trying to use the site, but anyone who finds themself in the unfortunate situation as to require unemployment assistance would benefit from an improved web portal for their requests.
Issue area(s) relevant to your project idea:
What is the current state of your project idea?
This is currently just an idea I had based on the national challenges that have a similar end goal (applying for housing and food stamps). For each of those challenges, they suggest three different tasks that could be accomplished, one of which is citizen onboarding. We would be able to follow those instructions to accomplish this.
Tell us more about the current state of your project idea.
Do you have any links to news articles, text, mockups, code, or data?
The project is currently just an idea. But there are some links I can add to gain more of an understanding of the challenge.
Tell us about yourself.
What is your background? Why is this challenge important to you?
Are you representing a group in submitting this project idea?
I am a senior software engineer that was recently laid off after 12 years. This challenge is important to me because I have had the displeasure of requesting unemployment benefits through CONNECT and found the experience very confusing and difficult. To that end, I still haven't received any unemployment assistance and have since given up because the process just didn't make any sense. There is probably a larger issue with the system that needs to be improved, but my hope is that this project could be a stepping stone towards those larger end goals of improving the system.