STATEWIDE — After a series of social media posts describing massive “layoffs” through Florida Department of Economic Opportunity, the agency late Tuesday confirmed it has ended contracts with two call center providers.
What You Need To Know
- DEO ends contracts with AECOM and United Data Technologies
- RELATED: Florida Spending $110M to Add 1,500 Unemployment Call Center Workers
DEO says it ended the contracts with AECOM and United Data Technologies.
“The Department is prioritizing vendors who have fully trained representatives to handle all claimant issues and are more proficient in the CONNECT system, are meeting or exceeding contractual performance expectations, and providing high-quality customer service to Floridians,” DEO said. “Vendors who are not providing as high-quality services will not continue to provide services at this time.”
DEO says it still has more than 3,000-contracted call center agents on hand to handle calls.
In a Spectrum News’ ongoing survey, many people have continued to express frustration to the news station directly in recent days and weeks about being unable to get through to call centers, or if they could, could not get questions answered or issues solved.
On April 10, DEO announced it signed the first three contracts totaling up to $110 million for call center support.
United Data Technologies's contract was worth up to $12.3 million. AECOM’s contract was worth up to $24.6 million.
It is not clear how much either company has received. Repeated efforts for comment from AECOM and United Data Technologies were not returned.
DEO confirms it does still have contracts with Titan Technologies (doing business as TeleForce) and Faneuil.
The original contracts signed in April provides up to $79.9 million to TeleForce for providing at least 1,000 call center agents and 33 supervisors. Fanueil’s contract is valued at $17.5 million for at least 250 call center agents.
A state database has not shown how much any of the companies contracted for call center services have received up to this point, with the exception of Faneiul, which appears to have been paid at least $717,000.
State records also show the contracted companies combined have earned millions of dollars since at least 2010 providing services to various state agencies, including Florida Department of Economic Opportunity, Florida Department of Transportation, Florida Department of Education, and Florida Department of Transportation.
AECOM released the following statement that, in part, read:
"... At the time of the notice AECOM recently received from the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity (DEO), the center employed hundreds of full-time agents, all of them Florida residents working safely from their homes, who answered hundreds of thousands of calls. Their work enabled the DEO to process more than $9 billion in unemployment benefits. We are proud to have been able to help the Florida DEO and the citizens of Florida during this critical time.
AECOM stands ready to assist the State and the DEO should their needs change or funding to support this type of operation become available."
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