Digital Benefits Wishlist: Insights from BenCon 2023

The Digital Benefits Network at the Beeck Center for Social Impact + Innovation recently hosted the Digital Benefits Conference (BenCon) on June 13-14, 2023  for 120 cross-sector practitioners from 70 organizations.

On this page we share observations from a BenCon workshop where participants were invited to individually and collectively reflect on tools, resources, or policy changes needed to improve benefits delivery. Participants identified “wishes” they aim to see in improving the ecosystem for benefits delivery.

All wishes were compiled into a dataset. Each wish is cataloged based on whether it identifies a needed resource, example, tool, idea, policy, or type of data. Each entry also identifies relevant stakeholders who may already be working on a topic, or be equipped to help achieve a wish; and notes whether a  wish expands or builds on current work. Additionally, we have added tags for topics and benefits programs where relevant, making it easier to group related ideas. We hope that the data points shared in this dataset serve as a resource and inspiration for departments and agencies administering benefits and inform the future of digital benefits delivery.

Digital Benefits Wishlist Gallery

High-Level Findings

BenCon participants’ wishes spanned multiple themes, including:

Increased field-wide collaboration

Practitioners expressed a need for increased collaboration across the civic technology field to leverage the knowledge, skills, and expertise of government and the nonprofit sector to improve benefits delivery. Others wished for a greater shared understanding of the challenges and issues in benefits systems, as well as coordinated efforts among experts to address them. Additionally, practitioners aimed to see more partnerships with community-based partners to ensure that a diversity of voices and experiences are represented in research and development in benefits delivery.

Customer experience & customer-centered metrics

‍Practitioners aimed to see improvements in the customer experience of benefits programs and called for robust, customer-centered metrics to help agencies administering benefits better understand and evaluate the performance of their programs. Participants’ wishes included increased sharing of templates for customer-facing notices across benefits programs written in plain language; information on how to perform trauma-informed user-experience research for benefits programs; and best practices for equity-centered partnerships with community-based partners to ensure that necessary voices and experiences are represented.  

Shareable procurement templates

Practitioners also wished for shared templates and samples of request for proposals (RFPs), requests for information (RFIs), and contracts for benefits systems to help benefits agencies communicate with vendors regarding requirements and expectations for upgrading their digital systems. Other wishes included improvements to procurement processes that allow for agile development to incorporate user feedback.

Use of data

Practitioners called attention to the sharing and uses of broad data and information relating to benefits delivery, applications, and outcomes. This includes the sharing of data of benefit uptake rates across states and at the federal level and for disaggregated data for benefits programs to be available sooner. Practitioners underscored using existing administrative data to conduct automatic renewals for benefits programs.  

Add Your Wish

We are publishing this dataset of wishes publicly to share insights and reflections of what practitioners aim to see in better digital benefits delivery.

We hope that this shared resource will guide benefits agencies and stakeholders in their work to create better digital systems, policies, tools, and resources for different benefits delivery scenarios.

If you would like to submit a “wish” to increase this dataset please use this form.