The State of California intends to award a multi-million dollar IT Services contract to KPMG, LLC, for Business Process Re-Engineering (BPR) at the Employment Development Department, according to state procurement records.

KPMG will be tasked with retooling the way Californians access and track their unemployment benefits, overhauling a system that failed disastrously during the COVID-19 pandemic, leaving vulnerable citizens in the lurch.

In August, EDD issued a Request for Proposal that “seeks to assess, analyze, and redesign the business processes that impact the customer experience into a customer-centric business framework that leverages improvements and supporting technologies to deliver world-class customer service.”

EDD wants to improve service delivery, eliminate unnecessary complexity in their service process, and reduce administrative burden, among other needs, according to the RFP.

Since the early days of the COVID-19 Pandemic, EDD has been criticized for failing to deliver unemployment benefits and losing over $10 billion in unemployment fraud, according to a Jan. 2021 statement.

Meanwhile, on Tuesday, Gov. Newsom signed more than 40 bills that “will enable the Employment Development Department to bolster fraud prevention, further protect claimants from identity theft and better position the state to respond to future economic downturns.”