About
The Digital Government Hub is a dynamic, open-source reference library for anyone using design, data, and technology to improve and enhance government service delivery. It is curated and maintained by partner non-profit organizations, the Beeck Center for Social Impact + Innovation at Georgetown University and the American Public Human Services Association (APHSA).
Networks at the Beeck Center for Social Impact + Innovation
The Digital Benefits Network (DBN) and Digital Service Network (DSN) are projects of the Beeck Center for Social Impact + Innovation at Georgetown University. Our networks envision that all people have equitable access to easy-to-use and responsive government services. We support inclusive, cross-cutting networks of practitioners to build and sustain the knowledge, skills, and abilities that enable human-centered digital delivery. Both the DBN and DSN are non-partisan, non-profit, non-vendor aligned networks.
Digital Benefits Network
The Digital Benefits Network (DBN) supports government in delivering public benefits services and technology that are accessible, effective, and equitable in order to ultimately increase economic opportunity. [Learn more]
Digital Service Network
The Digital Service Network (DSN) empowers governments to use human-centered strategies to deliver digital services that meet the needs and expectations of people who use them. [Learn more]
American Public Human Services Association
The American Public Human Services Association (APHSA) supports leaders from state, county, and city human services agencies to advance the well-being of individuals, families, and communities nationwide. As a bipartisan membership association, they work with their members to generate pragmatic solutions grounded in lived experience with a lens for equity and belonging.
Co-Creating the Hub
The Digital Government Hub started with prototype websites that sought to experiment in how to offer resource libraries to our practitioner-focused audiences through the Digital Benefits Hub, Digital Service Network Resource Library, and Civic Design Library. These early offerings helped us gather feedback and insights about how to make a resource that’s highly responsive to people working to improve government services, and also how to operationalize it within our teams.
In the spring and summer of 2024, cross-sector practitioners participated in interviews and usability tests to provide direct feedback to the new design. We consider the Digital Government Hub a living site that will continue to grow and respond over time.
Our Advisory Panel for Excellence in Digital Benefits Delivery (APEX) engages and empowers government and nonprofit practitioners to explore accessible, equitable, and ethical service journeys, and to elevate actionable examples of excellence that can be broadly shared and adopted across the digital benefits ecosystem, including through the Digital Government Hub.
We welcome your feedback at any time via email to digitalgovhub@georgetown.edu.
Have something useful to our mission of improving access to important government services? Submit your resources to the Digital Government Hub.
Digital Government Hub Materials
There are two types of Digital Government Hub materials:
Examples
Examples are the tools, frameworks, and guidelines that shape and power government digital service delivery. Examples are added from government agencies and delivery partners. Materials include: annual reports, benefits applications, contracts, data sharing agreements, executive orders, job descriptions, RFPs and RFIs, strategy documents, code repositories, and more.
Resources
Resources provide context and framing on how to deliver digital government services. Resources are added from government leaders and non-governmental organizations that work in academia, civil society, technology, design, and other sectors. Materials include: articles, case studies, fact sheets, datasets, policy briefs, reports, toolkits, videos, and more.
Download Data
Want to access our open database of Hub examples and resources? Download our data.
More about the Digital Benefits Network
The Digital Benefits Network supports government in delivering public benefits services and technology that are accessible, effective, and equitable in order to ultimately increase economic opportunity.
- We value experience and expertise from diverse backgrounds, disciplines, and sectors.
- We work with people who design, deliver, administer, use, and influence public benefits.
- We work across key benefits programs including food and nutrition (SNAP, WIC), health (Medicaid/CHIP), cash assistance (TANF, basic income), child care, and unemployment insurance (UI) to identify shared challenges and opportunities, and to amplify strategies to enable equitable and effective implementation.
- We explore current and near-term challenges, while also creating space to envision and explore future policies, services, and technologies.
DBN Highlights
- Leading a network of cross-program, cross-sector public benefits practitioners who are expanding the equitable access and uptake of public benefits by improving the technology and services used to deliver them.
- Creating responsive and actionable tools and resources with the latest insights, promising practices, and vision for the future that enables implementation and inspires what’s possible in benefits delivery.
- Driving coordination, collaboration, and alignment in the digital benefits ecosystem.
- Research, support, events, and engagement for two Communities of Practice: Rules as Code and Digital Identity.
BenCon
The DBN hosts the annual Digital Benefits Conference — “BenCon” for short — the premier, invite-only event for government leaders, cross-sector practitioners, researchers, and students who are improving digital delivery of vital programs including SNAP, WIC, Medicaid, TANF, unemployment insurance, child care, basic income, and more. Core themes of the 2024 conference included improving digital service delivery, digital identity, automation and artificial intelligence, and timely topics in public benefits.
More about the Digital Service Network
The Digital Service Network empowers governments to use human-centered strategies to deliver digital services that meet the needs and expectations of people who use them.
- We openly create, curate, and amplify trusted resources that advance human-centered government services.
- We foster friendly, supportive communities for building authentic relationships in government.
- We respond to our network’s needs with research and storytelling that documents what is happening in the field and surfaces evidence-based strategies to inform decision making.
- We offer practice-oriented experiences that help governments translate ideas into action.
- We connect governments with technical assistance, and also provide self-service access to best practice information.
DSN Highlights
- Regular collaboration and connection among people working in government who are focused on or interested in deploying human-centered digital transformation strategies in their work.
- Robust, active discussions about “what’s possible” and “what’s good” in civic technology, with meaningful connections to the people doing the work to empower these discussions.
- Governments understand what equitable and accessible service delivery looks like, and can reliably connect back to others doing that work for peer-to-peer learning.
- Research, support, events, and engagement for two Communities of Practice: Chief Digital Service Officers, and User Experience & Research.
FormFest
The DSN hosts the annual “FormFest” virtual event — an international showcase of governments working to promote equity, leverage research to optimize, and make services accessible to everyone through forms.
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