Employment Development Department: policies and practices.

Existing law requires the Employment Development Department to administer a program for the payment of unemployment compensation to the eligible unemployed. Existing law requires the department to periodically review policies and practices used to determine eligibility and benefits that result in delayed eligibility unemployment determinations or benefit payments and that fail to identify or prevent fraud.

Existing law required the department to provide specified committees of the Legislature with a plan for assessing the effectiveness of its fraud prevention and detection tools by May 1, 2022, and to provide a report to those committees with an update on its progress on performing this assessment by July 1, 2022. Existing law requires the department to annually analyze and assess the effectiveness of its fraud prevention and detection tools and to submit this analysis and assessment to those committees, as specified.

This bill would revise those annual requirements to, instead, require the department to analyze and assess the effectiveness of its fraud prevention and detection tools and to submit this analysis and assessment to those committees, biennially commencing on January 1, 2027.