Delivering $2 Billion in Pandemic Relief through a Modern Digital Intake and Processing Solution

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, New York State created a $2.1 billion fund in 2021 to help those who weathered the pandemic without access to government relief. This program, known as the Excluded Workers Fund (EWF), administered by New York State’s Department of Labor (DOL), has been by far the biggest of its kind in the country.

The fund exists to provide eligible workers with one-time payments to help cover costs associated with joblessness like overdue rent and medical bills. Not only were these families and communities among the hardest hit by the virus in New York, but many lost their livelihoods and soon found themselves excluded from the myriad of relief programs that kept so many other New Yorkers afloat. As of this publication, the fund has allocated over $2B in critical assistance to over 128,000 families in need.

Ensuring Rapid Delivery

To ensure this vital relief could be made available as expeditiously as possible, DOL partnered with Google, Nuvalence, and others to build and deploy a modern cloud-native platform in just 12 weeks, including:

• Two best-in-class mobile-first applications built from the ground up leveraging Human-Centered Design
• Google’s Document AI – AI-based document review, data extraction, and fraud analysis
• Google’s Call Center AI – AI-based call center offering
• Google’s Looker Reporting Suite
• Google’s Cloud Platform as the underlying infrastructure for the program

Excluded Workers Fund Architecture

For this engagement, Nuvalence was selected as a prime developer collaborating across multiple work streams and defining a unified and comprehensive 360-degree customer experience. This included building two applications for the modern citizen (e.g., secure, mobile-first, digital) and leveraging ‘keep it simple’ as a foundational design principle. Upon completion, these applications include:

1. Customer Digital Intake: Applicants were able to apply online across a variety of form factors in 13 different languages, review their application status in real-time, get updated regularly (in their language of choice) via text message or email, scan and upload documents via their device of choice, and once approved receive their benefits via prepaid cards in the mail.
    
2. Digital Adjudication: Department of Labor Agency staff were able to seamlessly review all Claim applications online, request additional materials for a given Claim, review any Claim specific flags, escalate Claims for higher-level review as required, make the final determination for program eligibility, and ultimately ensure payment was sent. Additionally, the Agency was able to access relevant and actionable performance metrics via Looker and provide an unprecedented ’Fund Data Portal’ depicting real-time Fund performance transparently to the public.

“Reading about and hearing real-life stories of how paradigm-changing this program was for so many, has been inspirational and humbling for all of us. For example, soon after the program officially launched, a team member mentioned how they personally knew a family that was saved from homelessness via the benefits they received through the program.

Hearing a personal story like that and then reading stories about how minority communities and immigrant families benefited from the program really drove home how meaningful the work at hand was.

Personally speaking, I can attest to how rare it is to be part of an incredibly talented and newly formed team working on something with such clear and immediate impact. What a gift to participate in such a highly visible and strategically consequential engagement backed by the New York State Governor’s office.”

Tarik DiDomenico, Principal Product Manager at Nuvalence

About Nuvalence

Nuvalence’s selection as a prime consultancy for this engagement is a great example of how the company is empowering New York State (and others) to continue its digital transformation journey towards a customer-focused modern technology stack. Being awarded this opportunity is a testament to the company ethos Nuvalence was founded upon and continues to hold true to leveraging best-in-class modern technology coupled with Human-Centered Design to produce outcome-driven, client-centric results, all powered by a laser focus on hiring and retaining top-tier talent.

Visit New York State’s Department of Labor EWF White Paper to learn more about the Fund!