LANSING, Mich. — Failures of Michigan's unemployment system have gotten a lot of attention.
Fox 47 investigated several complaints about it from viewers, but that's not the only place the state is having tech problems.
The Department of Technology, Management and Budget said it is making upgrades to servers to help make online services, such as unemployment, easier to access.
"It's just an unprecedented demand," said Caleb Buhs, DTMB spokesman.
More than 1.1 million people filed for unemployment in Michigan in the last few weeks.
Most of those applications come in from online.
DTMB said those applications are straining the system.
"There is a huge demand for online services right now that has exceeded anything we've seen before," said Buhs.
Buhs said they've added servers to help get the unemployment filing system back up and running since it went offline a week ago.
"It's not just over a week we see a huge increase. It's everybody trying to access it at the same time during peak business," he said.
That outage affected several state agencies, including the Secretary of State, which is only handling online transactions right now.
That department has already had several system failures this year.
"The system will remain to have issues and we will be working on those issues," said Secretary of State spokesman Jake Rollow.
The most recent system outage was when the cameras went offline at branches across the state March 2.
Many people told Fox 47 then they had a six-hour wait, something Rollow said the department can't track.
"We don't track systems. There have not been installed tracking systems prior to our arrival that evenly effectively track wait times," he said.
Rollow said the Secretary of State Office is updating its independent systems.
"These are massive technological systems and they all fit together pieces of a puzzle so it's not a simple process," said Rollow.
DTMB said it invests millions of dollars every year just to upgrade existing systems.
The state said its systems are working most of the time on the IT side and people are able to successfully login about 80% of the time.
It's asking people not to try to certify their unemployment claims on Mondays when the system tends to get its most traffic.
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