Have you saved the State half a million dollars today? The newest Day in the Life feature employee, Don Eitniear, has.  He recently uncovered an AT&T billing discrepancy that has resulted in the state getting back over $500,000 in overcharges.  Don works as a Project Manager for the Remote Initial Claims (RIC) project with the Unemployment Agency.  The RIC project is automating the unemployment filing process; unemployed citizens are now able to file for benefits by phone or over the Internet.  Supporting this transition is the Customer Claimant Relations Hotline (CCRH), which is a legacy hotline that Unemployment Agency clients can use to get outstanding issues resolved.  In October of 2002, the CCRH needed to quickly expand the number of operators it had by 40.  However, AT&T said it needed about 45 days to increase the dedicated phone lines and capacity to meet our needs, and so switched into what is called “Service Assurance™” to immediately meet the needed increase in service.  Service Assurance™ typically re-routes calls from dedicated connection facilities to shared public facilities in the Ameritech (SBC) network.  When routing through Ameritech’s networks, AT&T is charged a fee per minute, which is passed through to the State in the form of a higher per minute rate.  As it turns out, however, these calls were actually being redirected (at the State’s instructions), through an alternate dedicated facility in the State of Michigan network, and the billing rate should have remained at the same dedicated facility rate. Because of his background in Telecommunications, Don noticed this “red flag” and brought it to AT&T’s attention.  A trace route of the calls to the hotline later proved that the calls were, in fact, coming in over the State network and that AT&T had billed the state for over a half million dollars for calls that never actually went through Ameritech.  As a result, AT&T has agreed to return about $513,000 to the State.  Don says the point of this victory is that by using our internal project managers and institutional knowledge, we were able to catch a problem that may have otherwise been missed. It was “programmed luck” that his Telecom knowledge, Project Management skills, and the need for a manager on the RIC project all came together at the same time to uncover the AT&T glitch.  It was certainly a lucky situation for the state!

When Don is not saving the state hundreds of thousands of dollars, he is known as a senior project manager for the RIC project.  He is responsible for the infrastructure of the RIC centers.  Ultimately, RIC is a modern-age electronic service, designed to replace long lines and paper forms.  So far, about 50,000 claims have been filed electronically, with about half of those filed on the Internet.  Since not everyone is comfortable with the web or has web access, call centers are also in place, which utilize an Interactive Voice Response system (IVR).  IVR has helped to speed up the process of claims filing.  Users can enter their social security number over the phone keypad and the computer systems in place can then populate the forms they need and file the claim.  One challenge to this system, however, was that the Unemployment Agency needed a way to help e-filers who had follow-up questions.  So the project team developed a way for users to re-call the same 800 number for up to 60 days, thus avoiding long waits and busy signals on “pre-RIC” call centers.  So far, Don says, this system has been very efficient.  In August of this year, there were as many as 40,000 busy signals per day on the legacy call centers, which sent callers to a pre-recorded message that covers a number of Frequently Asked Questions.  However, just a couple of months later, the busy signals are on a steady decline, now down to only about 16,000 per day.  When considering the volume of calls the offices are getting – the recent economic problems have increased the number of unemployment claims – the improvement in service is remarkable!

Don has really enjoyed working on the RIC project, where he has been for about two years.  He says he’s been able to get back to his roots, and “build things that never were.”  He says there are a lot of really good people working on the project and they have done some great work.  His only frustration is having to overcome the loss of continuity, created by early retirements and the rapid rollout schedules.

Don has worked for the State for 28 years, after 12 years in the private sector.   He spent much of his state service time with the Department of Social Services, which is now the Family Independence Agency.  Don came from DMB to DIT when it was created and has served our department in a number of capacities.  He graduated from Michigan State University’s School of Business, and has done extensive post-graduate work.  He also has a degree in Acoustics Engineering, and says GO STATE!