Automate Tax and Wage Reports via SFTP

The Georgia Department of Labor

Aging systems written in COBOL were creating challenges for the Department of Labor (DOL) in processing over 1,600 pieces of magnetic media per cycle. The system also increased the potential for a breach of security when data were sent via the United States Postal Service. In 2016, DOL began a modernization program to update the technology with the secure file transfer protocol (SFTP) as a primary focus.

Written in Java, SFTP allows payroll service providers and large single employers to transmit quarterly tax and wage reports electronically instead of mailing them on magnetic media as they had before. As a result, magnetic media submissions have decreased by 25 percent. SFTP also prevents employers from submitting reports with invalid, inactive, or voided DOL account numbers.