Benefits Journey: Eligibility
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Human-Centered Design 
The Federal government is redesigning how it delivers services
Article announcing five new projects by the Office of Management and Budget that will improve experiences the public has with the government during significant movements in their lives. These “life experience” projects are at the center of a new model for how the Federal Government should better design and deliver benefits, services, and programs to the American people during the moments in their lives that matter most.
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Human-Centered Design 
Helping More Than 1.3 Million Schoolchildren Access Pandemic EBT—in Just One Week
In response to the COVID-19 crisis, the federal government authorized a new emergency program, Pandemic EBT (P-EBT), to replace school meals with money for groceries while schools are closed. Code for America describes its efforts to launch an accessible, online P-EBT application under an accelerated timeline due to to immense demand caused by the pandemic.
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The Cash Assistance Implementation Playbook
The purpose of this document is to outline possible technical approaches to supporting a cash assistance program. The report aims to both capture individual approaches as well as overarching insights taken from across the approaches taken by different organizations.
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Human-Centered Design 
GetCalFresh Demo Website
Demo website for GetCalFresh—Code for America and the state of California’s efforts to simplify the SNAP application process.
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The Government Is Helping People Pay Rent, But Something’s Gone Wrong
Rent relief distribution in 2020 was slow and inequitable, because local programs instituted strict eligibility criteria beyond what was required by the CARES Act. As a result of these hurdles, incomplete applications were a major barrier to distributing funds. This report describes the rent relief challenges during the pandemic, as well as a few possible fixes to help the next round of aid distribution.
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A Playbook for Improving Unemployment Insurance Delivery
A playbook by New America describing lessons learned from past recessions, recent pandemic-inspired innovations, and complementary benefit spaces like SNAP and WIC.
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BenePhilly SNAP Demonstration Project
The BenePhilly SNAP Demonstration Project (henceforth “BenePhilly”) represents an innovative and successful approach to streamlining access to public benefits. It sought to increase participation in SNAP among eligible senior households in Philadelphia by utilizing existing state and federal data to reach seniors who are likely eligible for, but not participating in, SNAP, as well as simplify the SNAP application and enrollment process. This report summarizes preliminary findings from BenePhilly’s 18 months of operation (June 2010–December 2011).
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Human-Centered Design 
Overcoming Barriers: Helping Self-Employed Applicants Access Their Full CalFresh Benefit
People who are self-employed can receive a higher CalFresh benefit amount because of a 40% automatic deduction for expenses. Yet, many who would be considered self-employed for the purpose of CalFresh don’t think of themselves as self-employed. Code for America researched how to help CalFresh applicants correctly identify themselves as self-employed. This article describes their various experiments and efforts to help people understand their status as self-employed.
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Human-Centered Design 
Keeping Students Fed in an Uncertain Back to School Season: What We Learned from P-EBT, and What Comes Next
Code for America describes its work building the P-EBT online application and the consulting it provided to 10 states regarding implementing the program in a quick, effective, and human-centered way. Despite herculean efforts among human services and education agencies to get P-EBT off the ground, there were a few key technological, operational, and logistical barriers that consistently got in the way and hampered a smooth rollout of the program across the country.
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Human-Centered Design 
NJDOL Benefits Eligibility Tool
A beta version of a screening tool that lists benefits programs that New Jersey residents can use to determine what benefits they are eligible for.
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Reddit Is America’s Unofficial Unemployment Hotline
Thousands of Americans have begun frequenting the r/Unemployment subreddit to get help navigating state and federal unemployment systems.
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How Well Insured are Job Losers? Efficacy of the Public Safety Net
An extensive literature in economics documents large and persistent declines in earnings following involuntary job loss. Though Unemployment Insurance provides the largest buffer against lost income, due to the structure of the program, the neediest are less-well insured (in terms of dollars transferred and percentage of lost earnings replaced) compared to middle and higher income job losers. This has important implications in light of the historic number of job losses during the COVID-19 pandemic.