Tennessee’s unemployment website outage is causing problems for applicants
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (WSMV) - Many Tennesseans have had trouble submitting unemployment benefits or documents on Jobs4You.gov for the last week.
People haven’t been able to log into the website, which means more than 12,000 people who rely on unemployment benefits will not get their money on time. Chris Cannon with the Department of Labor and Workforce Development said the outage happened at the network operations center for their vendor in Florida sometime Sunday.
Cannon told us that there was a backup plan. “The vendor had a network operations center in Florida where everything runs out of. They also have a disaster recovery operations center in California. Either end of the country so that if something happens in Florida, service isn’t interrupted because it moves automatically to California. Unfortunately, the issue that they are having with their equipment in both centers. So our backup plan is also offline.”
Until the website is back up, the Tennessee Department of Labor and Workforce Development says it cannot access data to make weekly unemployment payments. Cannon said there may be a delay however they plan to get the system up and running by Saturday.
“No one will miss out on any of the benefits that they are eligible for,” Cannon said. “If they were eligible for benefits this week and we can’t get the system up and running so that they can get that benefit this week, it will just roll over into the next week. And when the system is up and running and they can certify, and we can verify their unemployment, then they will get a lump sum for all the payments that they are due.
The ‘Jobs 4 Tennessee’ website connects people across the state with other workforce resources. This includes connecting people who need a job with employers looking to hire.
The company that operates the website noticed something was wrong with its equipment on Sunday when Tennessee Labor Department employees could not access job applications, unemployment claims, and other information to process unemployment benefits.
The department says people are working around the clock to bring the website back online.
Senate Commerce and Labor Committee Chairman Paul Bailey sent the following statement:
People will be able to fill out paperwork for any missed weeks-- and will get a lump sum for delayed payments.
Geographic Solutions Inc. (GSI) is the company that runs the network server for the Jobs4TN website. GSI released a statement on Thursday, stating the outage is a result of their system being hacked.
GSI insists that no personal data was accessed during the breach, and no data was removed from its network operations center.
There remains no timeline as to when the website will be back up.
In the meantime, if anyone is looking for a job, you can reach out to one of the American Job Centers.
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