Michigan's unemployment system goes dark for a week. Here's how that week could go wrong

What Michigan announced

Michigan's Unemployment Insurance Agency is replacing MiWAM, the online system it has used for 14 years, with a new platform called MiUI. Employers and third-party administrators have already been using MiUI for tax work since February. On Monday, November 9, everyone moves over, including workers filing and certifying for benefits.

To get there, the agency is taking everything offline for a week. From 4:30 p.m. on Monday, November 2, all UIA systems, phone lines and Local Offices will be closed. At the same moment, MiWAM and MARVIN, the automated phone line people use to certify, are switched off for good, and filing a new claim by phone ends too. MiUI launches at 8 a.m. on Monday, November 9.

The agency is telling workers to certify before 4:30 p.m. on November 2, whatever their usual day. Anyone who misses a certification can catch up on past weeks, including the downtime week, once MiUI is live. During the downtime, mail and faxes are still received, and the Michigan.gov/UIA website and its chatbot stay up.

After launch, people sign in with a MiLogin account, the system works on a phone, and certifications and payments become weekly instead of every two weeks. There's a training hub called MiUI University and a page at Michigan.gov/ReadyforMiUI.

That's a thoughtful plan, and it comes after five years of work. It's also a useful example for any agency planning its own cutover, because the riskiest days of a project like this are usually the ones when nothing is supposed to be happening.

Imagine it's November 10

A pre-mortem is a simple exercise. Instead of asking what might go wrong, you assume it already has. It's the morning after launch, the week went badly, and you're writing down why. People find it easier to explain a failure that has "happened" than to predict one, and the list comes out more honest.

What follows is that exercise, done from the outside with nothing but the public announcement. It isn't a prediction about Michigan, and Michigan's team has almost certainly considered most of it. The point is the shape of the list, which applies to nearly any public system going dark for a switchover.

Five ways the dark week goes wrong

1. People certify on their usual day. The instruction to certify early is clear in the announcement, but people tend to keep their routines. Someone whose usual day is Wednesday may not read the notice, find nothing to log in to, and assume their benefits have stopped. The fix after launch, certifying past weeks, exists. The failure is the panic in between, and the calls that follow on November 9.

2. The only things still answering give old instructions. During the downtime the website and chatbot are the only parts of the agency still talking to the public. If a help article still says "log in to MiWAM" or "call MARVIN," or the chatbot was trained on last month's pages, it will confidently send people to systems that no longer exist. Those two channels need to be checked line by line for that one week.

3. Day one is a sign-in problem, not a benefits problem. On November 9 a large number of people try MiUI for the first time, many of them through MiLogin for the first time too. Forgotten passwords, identity checks and email codes that land in spam pile up in the first hour. If the help desk is staffed for benefits questions, it will spend the morning on logins.

4. Weekly payments look like missing payments. Moving from every two weeks to weekly is better for people, but any change in rhythm causes worry. Someone used to a larger payment every other week may see a smaller one and think something was cut. A short, plain explanation, repeated on every channel, heads off a lot of calls.

5. The mail keeps coming. Mail and faxes are received during the downtime, which is the right call. But a week of paper that can't be entered anywhere becomes a backlog on launch day, at exactly the moment the team is busiest. Somebody needs to own that pile, sort it as it arrives and decide what gets keyed in first.

There's a sixth one, which nearly every cutover shares: the people answering phones after launch learned the new system in training, not with real cases. The first real edge case, a claim that started in MiWAM and continues in MiUI, will take much longer than expected. A cutover week isn't quiet. It's just quiet on the systems you switched off.

What Michigan's plan already gets right

It's worth saying what the announcement does well, because these are the pieces other agencies often skip.

It names exact times. 4:30 p.m. on November 2 and 8 a.m. on November 9, not "early November."

It tells people what to do before the shutdown, and it says what happens if they don't. "You can certify for past weeks after launch" is the single most calming sentence in the notice.

It keeps something open. Mail, fax, the website and the chatbot stay available, so the public isn't facing a blank wall.

It moved one group first. Employers and third-party administrators have been on MiUI for tax since February. Splitting a migration like that lets one audience find the rough edges before the larger one arrives.

It points people to one place. MiUI University and the ReadyforMiUI page give staff, partners and the public the same source to share.

Run the pre-mortem on your own cutover

You can do this in an hour with the people who answer the public, not just the project team. Front-desk staff, call takers and whoever manages the website usually know where things will break.

Write the date of the morning after. Start the session with "It's the day after launch and it went badly."

Have everyone write reasons silently for ten minutes. Then go around the room, one reason each, until the list is exhausted.

Sort by channel. Phones, website, chatbot, mail, in-person, partner organizations. Gaps usually show up in the channels nobody owns during the downtime.

Give every item an owner and a check. "Search the help center for every mention of the old system" is a task. "Make sure messaging is consistent" isn't.

Decide what launch-day help covers. If day one is likely to be about logins, staff and script for logins.

Repeat it a week before. The second list is shorter and more specific, and it's the one that saves the week.

If your agency is planning a system replacement and wants help with the cutover, the public-facing pieces or the tools that keep running during downtime, that's the work of our government and public sector team. Talk to us.

Related work: Sutton Place.