JUNEAU — The online application for Permanent Fund dividends is back online, one week after an apparent technical flaw exposed the personal information of some applicants, but some applicants were still reporting problems.
By 5 p.m. Tuesday, more than 17,300 people had applied for the dividend, according to the Permanent Fund Dividend Division’s online counter.
Tuesday’s issues appeared to be less severe than what some applicants faced Jan. 1.
On that date, some Alaskans said their applications automatically filled in with another person’s personal data, including birth dates, bank account information, Social Security numbers and contact information.
Anne Weske, director of the dividend division, said last week that the application was online for about 30 minutes before being taken offline.
On Tuesday, some applicants said on social media that they experienced problems with the electronic signature portion of the application — specifically, that the online application was not notifying applicants that their signature has been processed.
“My session timed out after signing electronically,” Roger Galliett of Anchorage wrote on Facebook.
Several users who reported the problem said a return trip to the website revealed that the application had been submitted.
Reached in her office Tuesday afternoon, Weske said the division is aware of the issues and is fixing them. Small technical problems arise every year, she said, and Alaskans who apply later typically encounter fewer problems because the division’s technical experts are constantly receiving error reports and fixing issues.
On Tuesday afternoon, the Daily News asked Revenue Commissioner Bruce Tangeman how many people had been affected by the Jan. 1 errors.
“We took the website down within a matter of a half an hour. The clock when we took it down was under 100 folks. That doesn’t mean all 100 were affected by this incident,” he said.
When asked how the error happened, Tangeman said, “We are going to do a root-cause analysis. That’s the next step. Step No. 1 was to get the problem fixed, get the trust back that the site is safe for Alaskans and get the process rolling. So that’s what we’re going through today.”
In the week since the Jan. 1 error, Tangeman said staff at the Department of Revenue — parent agency of the dividend division — worked with staff from the Office of Information Technology in the Department of Administration to identify the programming flaw that caused the error, then laboriously ran through tests to ensure it had been corrected.
Weske said “millions” of tests were conducted before the application process reopened.
The 2019 dividend garnered particular attention during last year’s gubernatorial election, and Gov. Mike Dunleavy has fulfilled a campaign promise by proposing a dividend along the lines of the statutory formula used before 2016.
The Alaska Legislature will have the final say on the amount of the dividend, but if lawmakers approve Dunleavy’s plan to appropriate $1.94 billion from the Alaska Permanent Fund for the state’s dividend account, there would be enough money to deliver a dividend of more than $3,000 per person if 615,590 dividends are paid out, as was the case in 2017.
In a conversation with reporters ahead of a Tuesday afternoon cabinet meeting, Dunleavy said he will also seek to pay a retroactive dividend equivalent to the difference between the statutory dividend formula and the amount paid to Alaskans in 2016, 2017 and 2018. Former Gov. Bill Walker vetoed a portion of the 2016 payment, and the Legislature reduced it in 2017 and 2018.
An estimate by state Sen. Bill Wielechowski, D-Anchorage and a supporter of the retroactive payment, indicates it would amount to an additional $3,733 for an Alaskan eligible all three years. The cost of the additional dividend would be in excess of $2 billion, money that would be taken from the Permanent Fund.
Wielechowski’s proposal to pay a supplemental dividend as well as a separate proposal to enshrine the dividend in the Alaska Constitution were among the prefiled bills unveiled Monday.