The Employee Benefits Security Administration
The Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA) commits to educating and assisting more than 153 million workers, retirees, and their families covered by the benefit plans they oversee. The Technology Modernization Fund (TMF) recently awarded a new investment to the Department of Labor (DoL) that will help American employees find their lost retirement benefits and savings. As a part of this funding, WebFirst is working with EBSA to establish an online public “lost and found” registry, which will allow over 153 million workers, retirees, and their families to search for unclaimed retirement benefits. Through our customer experience (CX) process, we conducted targeted user interviews to inform mockups, prototypes, and UX artifacts. WebFirst then leveraged the Department of Labor's (DOL)’s Drupal application stack, React.Js, and cloud services to create the portal. For security, WebFirst integrated multi-factor Login.gov authentication for the public-facing portal, with automated role-mapping for secure access, and implemented Azure single sign-on for system administrators.
Moreover, WebFirst built an ETL and Machine Learning (ML) text extraction system to process approximately 3 million Form 8950 records using AWS Glue and Textract - which is capable of parsing data from diverse document formats such as PDFs and PNG files at a low computing cost. WebFirst’s experience building ML/AI tools was essential for processing the extensive collection of unstructured data.
Our project management team oversaw this effort by employing Agile methodologies (Scrum with Jira), including the Section 508 Trusted Tester process, to enhance site usability and minimize errors. The strategy included employing USWDS 3 components - which adhered to Section 508 and WCAG 2.2 AA standards - while maintaining EBSA’s brand guidelines, to arrive at a consistent, expected, and successful resolution.
Related Links:
Try finding your Lost 401k Account: https://lostandfound.dol.gov/
Do You Have Retirement Money to Claim? This New Database Could Help You Find Old 401(k)s
