A guide to navigating New York City’s public services. It was made with and for families of students living in temporary housing or experiencing homelessness and the NYC Department of Education’s Office of Students in Temporary Housing (STH).
Applicants to federal aid programs face numerous barriers in accessing benefits they are eligible for. The Centers for Medicaid and Medicare conducted an extensive qualitative user research study to better understand applicant experience in enrolling in public assistance programs. Based on the results, the study emphasizes the need for simplified, streamlined and less burdensome application processes.
In this updated primer, the DBN describes how identity proofing and authentication show up in public benefits applications and outlines equity and security concerns raised by common identity proofing and authentication methods.
The Policy2Code Prototyping Challenge explored utilizing generative AI technology to translate U.S. government policies for public benefits into plain language and code, culminating in a Demo Day where twelve teams showcased their projects for feedback and evaluation.
In December 2024, the Digital Benefits Network released an updated open dataset on authentication and identity proofing requirements across various public benefits applications to highlight best practices and areas for improvement in identity management.
There were over 25 million Medicaid disenrollments in 2023, but national enrollment remained significantly above pre-pandemic levels at over 56 million, with notable state-level variations and near-recovery of child enrollment.
This case study details the development of a document extraction prototype to streamline benefits application processing through automated data capture and classification.
This case study documents how Civilla partnered with the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) to redesign and modernize online enrollment for the state’s largest benefit programs.
This report examines how recent federal spending cuts and policy changes are shifting costs onto county governments, potentially burdening local budgets and services.
