COVID-19 led to a surge in unemployment insurance claims without modern precedent. To meet the surge in requests, state and federal systems needed to maintain high availability and reliability.

For the last decade, AEM has supported the State Information Data Exchange System (SIDES), which has modernized the exchange of information between employers/their third-party administrators (TPAs) and State Unemployment Insurance (UI) agencies. We developed the software to support web services and manual requests, spanning six response websites and one administrative website that reports on all data exchanges.

Based on this foundation, we worked diligently to support unemployment insurance reporting infrastructure at a state level. In partnership with ATOS and NASWA, we kept service availability higher than 99.99% while managing more than 25 million requests. SIDES supported 53 states and territories, 64 web service employers (such as Equifax), and hundreds of thousands of small and large businesses that do not have integrations but must respond to state requests.