It turns out anything is possible in Nevada’s government — including rolling out a massive computer systems project on time and within budget.

The Nevada Department of Employment, Training and Rehabilitation (DETR) on Tuesday celebrated the recent release of its new, $72 million unemployment insurance system that seeks to provide a more user-friendly platform for the tens of thousands of people who receive unemployment benefits in Nevada, which has the highest jobless rate of any state in the nation. 

The new system allows claimants to, for the first time, access accounts from their mobile devices, use self-service tools to file and view claims and appeals online, as well as use direct deposit. It also has a chatbot and resources available in 15 languages.

It’s a rare case of a state IT project coming in on time and within budget. In 2023, the state estimated that the first phase of the project would go live at the beginning of 2024, with the second phase set for a summer 2025 release — and it met both deadlines.

When the project first received state approval at the end of 2022, DETR estimated that it could take up to four years. It ended up taking less than three.

The rollout concludes the yearslong effort to revamp the state’s outdated unemployment platform, with its fragility exposed during the pandemic when a 20-fold surge in unemployment claims bogged down the system that ran on decades-old programming language, creating long delays in disbursing benefits. 

Additionally, an external review of the systems found they were outdated, overly complex, costly and unable to successfully integrate Pandemic Unemployment Assistance — a new program for gig workers and self-employed Nevadans.

In an interview Tuesday, DETR Director Chris Sewell attributed the project’s success in part to buy-in from agency employees, many of whom assisted with the project on top of their additional duties. He also touted the agency’s decision to spend “many months” fine-tuning the scope and details of the project before selecting a third-party vendor.

“The companies that were bidding on the project knew exactly what we were looking for,” Sewell said. “I would encourage — whether it's a state system or a private enterprise system — do the work on the front end. Don't try to fix it midstream. It's gonna hurt.”

Jack Robb, the state’s chief innovation officer, told The Indy on Tuesday that the relationship between the vendor and state is essential in these kinds of projects — which certain failed projects learned the hard way. 

“Treating your vendor as a partner — not treating them as a vendor — and developing that working relationship is key to success,” he said.

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What are the changes?

The new system seeks to make things easier for everyone involved in the unemployment process, including people who are filing for unemployment benefits and for employers, who use the system to disclose a new business, report wages and pay payroll taxes that fund the unemployment system.

The first part of the project only affected employers. It went live in February 2024, three months after work began. At the time, DETR officials said the next and final stage of the project — which addressed people filing for unemployment — would go live in summer 2025.

That stage of the project went live on July 7, following a weeklong period where services went dark to migrate systems. 

It includes a redesigned portal for unemployment claimants, real-time tracking of claim statuses and videos on how to use the new system, which were viewed more than 24,000 times in the first week of the rollout, according to DETR.

DETR officials have also highlighted the system’s efforts to root out fraud — a significant problem during the pandemic, when the state paid out an estimated $1.4 billion in improper or fraudulent benefits, more than 10 percent of the total payouts, Sewell told legislators in 2023.

The new system has two-step verification and can more easily detect irregular activity because it is a cloud-based system. If there is a fraudster trying to gain access to the unemployment system and users’ information, the new program has more advanced response measures than the old system.

Although the state has caught up on its pandemic-era backlog of unemployment claims, there are still about 24,000 Nevadans who receive unemployment benefits weekly and more than $9 million in total payouts made each week.

Nevada’s unemployment rate — now standing at 5.5 percent — has ranked near last in the nation since the pandemic.

“When Nevadans lose their jobs, they face more than a loss of just income. They face stress, uncertainty and the challenge of finding the next opportunity,” Sewell said at a press conference Tuesday. “Unemployment benefits provide that bridge and temporary support during that time. We modernized the system [to] deliver that support clearly, quickly and more reliably.”

Bumpy ride for other projects

It’s not the only massive state computer system to have these kinds of issues — but it is the only one to be recently fixed without any notable hiccups.

Since 2015, the state has in starts and stops sought to overhaul its finance and human resource systems that use the same programming language as the unemployment system. 

Its first crack at modernizing this system — the SMART21 project — failed in 2023 when Gov. Joe Lombardo pulled the plug shortly after he took office. The state spent nearly $80 million on the project across more than three years of work, and The Indy previously reported that it collapsed because of poor leadership, minimal staffing and training and tension between those involved in the project.

Now, the state is embarking on a new version of the project called Core.NV.

It’s been a bumpy ride so far — after the finance portion went live in January, users reported myriad errors in the distribution of certain child support, pension and health savings account payments. The state also delayed the new HR system’s launch from July to October, and multiple state employees have told The Indy that confusion surrounding the project and its progress remains.

Robb, who is helping oversee the Core.NV project, said the effort is particularly complex and defended postponing the HR rollout to October as a “prudent business decision.” The initial goal to release the new system on July 1 would have coincided with the start of a new fiscal year, as well as the launch of a new state health agency.

“It would have been problematic at best, and we just don't have enough hands on our deck to pull something that big off,” Robb said.

The Nevada DMV is also on its second crack at modernizing its outdated computer systems.

The first effort to upgrade the system — which runs in part on the same outdated programming as the state unemployment, finance and HR systems — failed in 2018, with the state spending more than $30 million with nothing to show for it after three years. A state audit found that the contractor had grossly understaffed the project.

This time around, there has been more progress, but it is still years away from completion.

Although officials said multiple times that the latest effort was within budget and on track to finish by September 2026, the DMV now expects the final phase of the project to wrap up at the end of fiscal year 2029.

The state has spent or allocated about $178 million on the project so far, according to information provided by a DMV spokesperson Hailey Foster. The original cost estimate was $125 million, but officials said last year that the cost could balloon up to $425 million under a “worst-case scenario” after determining that some of the work would shift to an outside contractor, costing more money and taking longer. 

The project is tracking to come in at about $140 million less than the worst-case scenario, Foster said.

So far, the DMV has rolled out features such as rapid registration, a new online portal for people to more easily register their vehicles, and turbo title, a tool to apply for vehicle titles online. The agency is also expected to roll out 100 vehicle features by the end of this fiscal year, including an online application for disabled placards and fleet registration.

However, a third modernization project is moving in a better direction.

The Department of Taxation’s My Nevada Tax program is aiming to create a unified tax system across the state. In October, the department went cashless for all of its transactions, and rolled out its first phase in December (which included online services for the state’s sales and use tax, live entertainment tax and others). 

That project is using the same vendor that DETR used, FAST Enterprises.

Updated on 7/23/25 at 5:11 p.m. to add more information about the total cost of the DMV project.