I just love it when the US government hires out private companies with proprietary software to perform sensitive public services like these! /s

The article itself links to one small justification for the change on the online front, namely How 100 Million in Jobless Claims Went to Inmates, which is absolutely mind boggling. The entity in charge of both deciding who gets thrown in prison and for how long, cannot keep track of those same people when it comes to jobless claims. Yes, this type of federal / state coordination is difficult and there are lots of reasonable reasons it turned out this way, but the result of the mess is almost comedic, were it not just sad.