Updating the Employment and Training Administration (ETA) 361 Handbooks

EMPLOYMENT AND TRAINING ADMINISTRATION ADVISORY SYSTEM U.S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR Washington, D.C. 20210	CLASSIFICATION UI
	CORRESPONDENCE SYMBOL OUI/DPM
	DATE

ADVISORY: UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE PROGRAM LETTER NO. -----

TO: STATE WORKFORCE AGENCIES

FROM: PORTIA WU

Assistant Secretary

SUBJECT: Updating the Employment and Training Administration (ETA) 361 Handbooks

1. Purpose. To transmit a revision of the benefits portions of the UI DV Employment and Training (ET) Handbooks No. 361 to reflect data validation requirements when modernization occurs, changes to the 227 Report and high dollar overpayment threshold, and minor edits for clarity.

2. References.

• Employment and Training (ET) Handbook 361, Unemployment Insurance Data Validation Handbook on Benefits

• Employment and Training (ET) Handbook 361, Unemployment Insurance Data Validation Handbook on Tax

• Unemployment Insurance Program Letter (UIPL) No. 08-12, Change 1.

• Unemployment Insurance Program Letter (UIPL) No. 17-10, Change 2.

3. Background. UI DV is necessary to ensure that data reported by states and used for measuring performance, administrative funding allocations, economic analysis, and other purposes are accurate and comparable across states. A revised version of the UI DV Benefits Handbook was issued in May 2013. As State Workforce Agencies (SWA) update and modernize their UI data management systems, totally or partially or in any way that impacts ETA UIRR, states must validate data for every benefit or tax population the following year once the system goes live. With the revision of the ETA 227 Overpayment Detection and Recovery Activities report, the DV program was modified to raise the high dollar threshold from $5,000 to $25,000. This new revision of the Benefits Handbook reflects this recent modification to the program.

4. Additional Instructions. The definition for the High Dollar (Fraud and Non-fraud) Overpayments has been modified in ET Handbook No. 401, Unemployment Insurance Reports Handbook, section IV, chapter 3 and detailed in UIPL No. 08-12, Change 1.

5. OMB Approval. The OMB approval number for the Data Validation Program is 1205-0431 with an expiration date of May, 31 2016.

6. Handbook Maintenance. Distribute attached handbook pages to all holders of ET Handbook No. 361, UI Data Validation Handbook, Benefits, dated May 2013. States should review these changes and adjust their procedures, as necessary. There are no changes to data collection or the data validation process.

7. Effective Date for Implementing Changes. With the changes to the ETA 227 report, some programming changes are underway in the data validation software known as the SUN System. The programming changes should be deployed by quarter ending March 2016. States will be required to use the latest version of the SUN system software deployed to their data management servers provided by the National Office. States should have sufficient time to make the necessary programming changes when building their extract files to validate Benefits population 12 to accommodate the high dollar threshold for validation year 2016 (VY16). Any previously submitted data for VY16 without the new high dollar threshold will still be acceptable and considered a passing score while the SUN System programming is being updated. This will have minimal to no impact on burden to the states.

8. Action Requested. State administrators should distribute this advisory to appropriate staff.

9. Inquiries. Inquiries should be addressed to the appropriate Regional Office.

10. Attachment(s).

1. Replacement pages for ET Handbook No. 361 Unemployment Insurance Reports Data Validation Handbook on Benefits

Unemployment Insurance

Data Validation Handbook

Benefits

Office of Unemployment Insurance

Department of Labor

May 2013

OMB No:  1205-0431     

OMB Expiration Date:  May 31, 2016

Estimated Average Response Time: 573 hours.

OMB Approval. The reporting requirements for ETA Handbook 361 are approved by OMB according to the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995 under OMB No. 1205-0431 to expire May 31, 2016. The respondents' obligation to comply with the reporting requirements is required to obtain or retain benefits (Section 303(a)(6), SSA). Persons are not required to respond to this collection of information unless it displays a currently valid OMB control number.

Burden Disclosure. SWA response time for this collection of information is estimated to average 573 hours per response (this is the average of a full validation every third year with an estimated burden of 900 hours, and partial validations in the two intervening years), including the time for reviewing instructions, searching existing data sources, gathering and maintaining the data needed, and completing and reviewing the collection of information. Send comments regarding this burden estimate or any other aspect of this collection of information, including suggestions for reducing this burden to the U. S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration, Office of Workforce Security (Attn: Rachel Beistel), 200 Constitution Avenue, NW, Room S-4519, Washington, D.C. 20210 (Paperwork Reduction Project 1205-0431).

ET Handbook No. 361 Unemployment Insurance Reports Data Validation Handbook on Benefits

A. Purpose

States report Unemployment Insurance (UI) data to the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) on a monthly and quarterly basis under the Unemployment Insurance Required Reports (UIRR) system. The UIRR data are used for gathering economic statistics, allocating UI administrative funding, measuring state performance, and accounting for fund utilization. Therefore, it is important that states report UIRR data accurately and uniformly. The purpose of the Data Validation (DV) program is to verify the accuracy of the UIRR data. This handbook covers the part of the program that validates benefits data.

In the DV program, the states validate their data and report the results of the validation to the Employment Training Administration (ETA). This handbook provides general instructions on how to validate the data as well as individual instructions for each state (referred to as Module 3). States use the DV software provided by DOL to conduct the validation and submit results.

Table A shows the general types of UIRR data to be validated, the Federal ETA reports on which the data appear, and the areas where the data are used.

States are required to validate reported data every third year, except for data elements used to calculate Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA) measures, which must be validated annually. Items that do not pass validation must be revalidated the following year. The “validation year” coincides with the State Quality Service Plan (SQSP) performance year. It covers data of any reporting period during the twelve months beginning April 1 and ending March 31. Results must be submitted to the National Office by June 10, which allows sufficient time for data validation results to be included in the SQSP process. States that fail DV or do not submit their DV results by the established deadline must address these deficiencies through the SQSP. If states modernize their UI benefits data management system, partially, completely, or in any way that impacts reporting and therefore data validation, states must validate every benefits population the following year once the new system is deployed or goes live. This requirement includes populations with passing scores that were previously valid for three years and not yet due for validation.

ET Handbook No. 361 Unemployment Insurance Reports Data Validation Handbook on Benefits

Appendix A

Population 12 Notes

1. Subpopulations 12.1 – 12.8 and 12.17: Enter the Federal amount in Column 9 for joint claims.

2. Do not include revisions to overpayment amounts made in subsequent quarters. For example, if an overpayment was established in March and a revision to the amount was made in April, these revisions are reported in Population 13 as additions and subtractions but not reported in Population 12.

3. The “cause” of fraud overpayments must be either “Multiclaimant schemes” or “Single Claimant.” The software will reject records for fraud overpayments where the cause is not “multiclaimant schemes” or “Single Claimant.” States that use multiple codes for types of fraud committed by single claimants should use “Single Claimant.”

4. The accumulated amounts (i.e. fields Accumulated UI Amount, Accumulated Federal Amount, and Accumulated EB Amount) are used to calculate high dollar overpayments. Enter the total amount that the claim has from previous quarters that have not been counted already towards a high dollar overpayment in a previous quarter. For records belonging to the same claim, the accumulated amount should be the same. The software will add the accumulated amount only once. The high dollar threshold amount is $25,000.

5. To accommodate the special case when there is a claim that has no amount for a type of overpayment in the validation quarter but has an accumulated amount from previous quarters that needs to be used to calculate a high dollar overpayment, the software will accept a zero or blank value in the UI Amount, Federal Amount and EB Amount fields, but the corresponding accumulated amount must be greater than zero. For example, if the claim has a nonfraud amount but no fraud amount in the validation quarter, the validator needs to create a record with the accumulated fraud amount from previous quarters. The record should have the amount equal to zero, the accumulated amount greater than zero and any date within the validation quarter as the date established. The software will accept records with the amount equal to zero only if the accumulated amount is greater than zero. For example, if the Program Type is UI, and the UI Amount = 0, then Accumulated UI Amount > 0 and/or Accumulated Federal Amount > 0 if it’s a joint claim. If Program Type is UCX or UCFE and Federal Amount = 0, then Accumulated Federal Amount > 0. If Program Type is EB, and EB Amount = 0, then Accumulated EB Amount > 0. This does not apply to Penalty records, for which the accumulated amounts are always optional because they are not used to calculate high dollar overpayments. The high dollar threshold amount is $25,000