Digital Doorways to Public Benefits: Understanding User Experiences with Identity Management

How does interacting with digital identity systems impact people’s experiences of accessing public benefits?

The Project

Public benefits agencies may use account creation, authentication systems, or digital identity proofing to understand who users are, secure systems, and protect private data. However, these processes can pose undue barriers to people accessing benefits. This project aims to provide administrators with first-hand experiences of members of the public who use digital identity systems as they apply for and access public benefits.

Project Background

When people across the United States apply for public benefits online, they may be asked to create a username and account, and in some cases, prove who they are by verifying their identity. “Digital identity” refers to the ways someone represents themself online while “identity proofing” gives a service or system confidence that a person is who they say they are. When implementing identity management approaches, public benefits administrators must balance security with accessibility, ensuring verification and account requirements don’t create unnecessary barriers. Digital identity tools can affect service access, raise equity and data privacy concerns, and impact staff workload.

Since 2022, the Digital Benefits Network (DBN), a project of the Beeck Center for Social Impact + Innovation at Georgetown University, has been providing research and resources about how identity proofing and authentication practices are integrated into online public benefits applications in the U.S. The DBN has published multiple reports and recommendations addressing digital identity issues across jurisdictions, established a new, cross-sector community of practice focused on digital identity and access in public benefits, and launched an ongoing collaboration with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) to develop voluntary resources for benefits administrators.

Now, the DBN aims to better understand the first-hand experiences of members of the public who use digital identity systems as they apply for and access public benefits. In pursuit of this goal, the Public Policy Lab and the DBN are conducting human-centered research with beneficiaries across the United States. Our findings will inform ongoing work on digital identity system improvement. Throughout research, we will collect multimedia stories from research participants and develop a short video of meaningful footage to enrich the report and disseminate these perspectives to the public.

Stay tuned for updates and publications from this project in summer 2025!