Exhibit 63 (Corrected) — In re Bank of America California Unemployment Benefits Litigation (Dkt. 336-5, S.D. Cal. No. 3:21-md-02992)

Record facts

U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California · No. 3:21-md-02992-GPC-MSB · Doc. 336-5 · 2024-09-13 · Docket on CourtListener

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Corrected
Exhibit
 
63
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Employment Development Department Strike 
Team Detailed Assessment and Recommendations 
Prepared by EDD Strike Team Co-Chairs 
Secretary Yolanda Richardson, Government Operations Agency 
and 
Jennifer Pahlka, founder of Code for America and 
former US Deputy Chief Technology Officer 
September 16, 2020 
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STRIKE TEAM FINAL DETAILED ASSESSMENT AND RECOMMENDATIONS - pl 
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refined it over the course of the final week of the Strike Team's engagement, and the result is a 
plan to address each and every claim in the backlog with the maximum possible speed and 
efficiency. In this analysis, older claims will begin to be addressed immediately, and with relief 
coming to many claimants as soon as a few weeks from now, and the final remnants of the 
backlog resolved within four months. The plan reflects incredibly disciplined, thorough, and 
thoughtful work on the part of the EDD team and is by far our best chance of getting claimants 
the relief they need. 
Moreover, EDD's comprehensive, data-driven approach to this plan should be commended, 
along with the leaders within the department who championed it. It should inspire confidence 
from all stakeholders, as it is emblematic of an approach that, if applied consistently to future 
challenges, will mean a dramatically different and better future for the department. 
Recommendations: 
• 
Adopt the "burndown,, plan EDD has proposed (which models where staffing is needed) 
and support the associated staffing changes. 
• 
Do not allow new hires to work overtime hours for the first three months, since those 
hours only create additional work for experienced employees. 
• 
Allow all redirected employees to return to their original desks to the greatest degree 
possible .. We found multiple employees who had been temporarily reassigned to 
different floors/areas, which disrupts their ability to collaborate with their original 
teams. 
• 
(As above) BCIS should build the functionality to allow employees to return work items, 
without requiring a supervisor to move them, and without requiring that the work item 
be reassigned to another employee. 
The call centers are overwhelmed 
EDD has two call centers: one is open from 8am-12pm, and is staffed by experienced 
Employment Programs Representatives, (EPRs) with the ability to make changes to claims. 
This is called "call center 1.0,, in some documents. A second call center, variously named 
((Technical Assistance Line,, or «call center 1.5,U is open from 8am-8pm, and is staffed by 
hundreds of new employees for the purposes of handling lower-level requests. 
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Call Center 1.0 (8a-12p) 
The phone number 1-800-300-5616, now called "call center 1.0, '' was not intentionally 
established as a call center; it was a convenience number connected to the desk phones at a 
particular Northern California field office. This phone number can't be routed anywhere outside 
of the in-office desk phone system, so as employees began telework and/or were reassigned to 
other priorities ( e.g. Work Share), they stopped answering the phones. 
This line received on average 6.7 million calls per week during the month of July, representing 
approximately 600,000 unique callers. The outbound call message also refers callers to the call 
center 1.5, which is discussed below. 
There is confusion among employees and management about this call center. When we visited 
the office where it is housed, and asked where the call center was, an employee speculated that 
perhaps it had moved to southern California, but that was determined to be inaccurate. A 
manager explained that because most of the staff is now working from home, and those that 
still come in have been redirected to other priorities, this office no longer answers a high 
volume of calls. This redirection is corroborated by the workforce-monitoring tools that EPMs 
use, including CCPulse and VCC. 
Prior to the pandemic, in February, the enterprise-wide average for this call center was that one 
employee could handle 5 calls per hour. (EDD's current public estimates are that agents can 
only handle 4 calls per hour.) EDD would need 6, ooo agents working from 8-12, without 
competing priorities, to serve 600,000 unique caners at 5 calls per hour. Observing the 
supervisor dashboard "CCPulse," we found no more than 20 employees answering calls at a 
time, and the number of empty cubicles we saw would support that number. We can safely 
estimate that no more than 1 in 1000 people that are trying to reach this call center on a given 
day are getting through. The morning our team visited this office, we observed four live phone 
calls in 90 minutes. Of those, two were determined by staff to be from claimants attempting 
fraud, and they were not helped. On each of the calls, much time was absorbed hearing the 
claimant explain the number of hours they have been on hold, and the number of days they 
have been trying to call, highlighting how challenging it can be to serve claimants efficiently 
under current circumstances. 
In summary, in "call center 1.0": 
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