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Comment by my_usernam3 | Hacker News Reader

I saw a Vox video recently that hinted that the Government WANTED broken unemployment systems after showing some of the bugs that existed in their interface. It infuriated me, because they mentioned Deloitte built it and I (like others have mentioned in this thread) know they are infamous for bad software.

It appeared to me Vox wanted to make people mad at some bogus government conspiracy that a specific state had against it's people. Also that they don't respect the complexities that go into software development.

Edit so you can get mad at Vox too with me: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ualUPur6iks&t=1s

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Florida purposely built a broken system under Governor Rick Scott. It was engineered to make sure that as few eligible people could access it as possible. It is socially and technically engineered to make it so that people give up trying to claim the unemployment benefits they are entitled to. Florida used the system to keep their unemployment numbers artificially low coming out 2008 recession.

I'd note that while a broken unemployment system would affect statistics on the number of claims made, the official unemployment rate is calculated differently, using the Current Population Survey, and doesn't incorporate data on claims:

https://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm

The state of Florida cares less about the unemployment rate and more about whether they have to pay out of their unemployment fund. The federal government is different because they just increase the deficit whenever the situation is dire.

So you contend that the ~7x delta in unemployment benefit uptake between states that they start the video with is... solely due to bad Deloitte software? That seems no less suspicious to me.

I haven't seen the video, but the current governor's Chief of Staff complained that the previous governor (both Republicans) actively created a difficult process and legal requirements which were very high hurdles to cross. Part of that are the anti-patterns or dark-patterns in the sign-up system, but the qualification requirements aren't as easy to qualify for as many other states.

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