Google worked with New York to create an Unemployment Application portal for New York. The hope is the Google-built site will better stand the torrent of people applying for unemployment then the current Department of Labor site has managed. A spike in applications has crushed local government websites as businesses shut down during the pandemic.

In an initiative dubbed “Tech Surge,” New York partnered with Google, Deloitte, and Verizon to “improve the reliability of the state’s online and telephone-based unemployment insurance application systems.”

The Google portion of the partnership led to the formation of a new unemployment application portal. The portal works with smartphones, tablets, and desktop browsers and remembers where a user left off if they need to complete the application over more than one session.

The site should go live today at the Department of Labor’s website, and the hope is more state governments can benefit from the work.