Benefits Program: COVID-19 Assistance
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Public Benefits Delivery & Consumer Protection
This Issue Spotlight explores the challenges that recipients of public benefits programs offering cash assistance encounter in accessing funds through financial products or services, with a specific focus on assistance provided on prepaid cards.
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Increasing Stimulus Payment Take-up in California: Results from a Phone and Email Campaign
In Fall 2021, The People Lab and the California Policy Lab partnered with the California Department of Social Services and Code for America to conduct and evaluate a state-wide outreach effort aimed at delivering stimulus payments to low-income Californians.
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Digitizing Policy + Rules as Code 
Project Snapshot: ACCESS NYC & Benefits Screening API
The NYC Mayor’s Office for Economic Opportunity (NYC Opportunity) developed the NYC Benefits Platform, including ACCESS NYC, to help residents easily discover and check eligibility for over 80 social programs. This mobile-first, open-source tool uses a simple eligibility screener, reducing access barriers while allowing integration with other city services like MyCity, ensuring efficient access to benefits.
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Policy 
Basic Income and Local Government: A Guide to Municipal Pilots
This guide consolidates learning and spotlights principles, insights, and emerging practices to guide municipal leaders and public-private partnerships interested in designing basic income programs that are ethical, equitable, rigorous, informative, and consequential for local, state and national policymaking.
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Digital Identity 
Digital Benefits Network Quarterly Call: What’s Next for Digital Identity in Public Benefits?
Identity proofing, authentication, and online access to benefits applications have been increasingly important issues for benefits agencies since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. During the call, we heard from two speakers: April Dunlap, Policy Administrator for Arizona’s Department of Economic Security and Professor Michele Gilman, Venable Professor of Law and Associate Dean for Faculty Research and Development at the University of Baltimore School of Law.
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Digitizing Policy + Rules as Code 
PolicyEngine US GitHub repository
PolicyEngine US is a Python-based microsimulation model of the US tax and benefit system. It models federal individual income taxes (including credits), major benefit programs, and state income taxes (currently in six states). The PolicyEngine US package can be used as a Python package, via the PolicyEngine API, or via the policyengine.org web app.
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Digital Identity 
Pandemic Unemployment Benefits – Where Franz Kafka Meets Fraud
In this panel conversation, presenters at the Better Identity Coalition’s 2022 policy forum “Identity, Authentication, and the Road Ahead” discuss the challenges of identity verification and access in pandemic unemployment benefits. Presenters include representatives from government, advocacy groups, and private industry.
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Digital Identity 
Opening Keynote–a Fireside Chat with the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee on Identity Fraud
In this video, Susan S. Gibson, chair of the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee's (PRAC) Identity Fraud and Redress Working Group, speaks with Jeremy Grant of the Better Identity Coalition, about the challenges of identity fraud for benefits program during the COVID-19 pandemic. This video comes from the Better Identity Coalition’s 2022 policy forum, “Identity, Authentication, and the Road Ahead."
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Delivering a Multilingual User Experience for Retroactive Pandemic Unemployment Assistance
A state partner needed to reopen applications to claimants who were previously denied benefits and determine if they are eligible to receive retroactive PUA payments. To help combat these issues, the state agency wanted to create a self-guided experience that was clear for claimants as well as reduce load on their call center. The team focused on providing enough contextual information in order to build trust and provide clarity with claimants, and worked to test content and form design before launching the new service in order to preempt and mitigate support issues.
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Teams that Produce Accessible Content
Creating content that is easily accessible for social safety net benefit applicants and recipients can require a range of expertise and input from policy experts, communications leads, designers, and software developers. However, this task need not be as daunting as it seems. This guide discusses general characteristics shared by organizations that have successfully created accessible content, and includes case studies that showcase characteristics of successful accessible content teams.
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Claim Your Child Tax Credit
Code for America’s simplified tax filing tool that allows users to claim their Child Tax Credit and any missing amount of their third stimulus payment.
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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.