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Content: This, coupled with the lack of continuing modernization to agency programs, and IT equipment for agency staff, left the Department in a difficult position of needing to scale quickly during a global crisis. Thanks to the General Assembly and Governor Pritzker, IDES was given an increased headcount for FY21, but adding full-time employees, as all state hiring does, takes time. This is especially true for IDES, whose employees possess a unique and complicated skillset to work on issues and deliver services to claimants. In the interim, the Department has partnered with contractors where it could, training more than 1,000 contractual employees in 2020 on basic information needed to answer and return claimant phone calls. And, IDES continues to add more employees, permanent and contractual, as quickly as possible and where needed. The legislators’ call for moving state employees from one hollowed out agency to another ignores the nuance of what is involved in these jobs and positions and would create productivity deficits in the agencies from which state employees would be pulled. When legislators such as Reps. Marron and Murphy hold these types of press conferences discussing anti-fraud measures within IDES, they would be remiss to think fraudsters are not also watching, paying attention, and attempting to discover new ways to access IDES systems. Simply put, the fraud prevention measures in place, and those we continue to implement as we work with law enforcement partners to understand new tactics used by fraudsters, are not a blueprint the Department is ever going to disclose. Not everyone who files an unemployment claim is eligible to receive unemployment benefits.