EBT theft has deeply damaged the lives of the lowest-income Americans. The following insights reveal a system that leaves people in the dark and fails to protect a crucial lifeline.
The ubiquity of mobile devices makes it imperative to build “mobile first” services, i.e. services built with the expectation that they will primarily be accessed on mobile devices. This article also outlines important considerations and suggestions for implementing mobile-first user interfaces.
This Urban Institute article argues that poverty is driven by structural barriers rather than individual choices and advocates for safety net programs that address systemic inequities.
This piece highlights promising design patterns for account creation and identity proofing in public benefits applications. The publication also identifies areas where additional evidence, resources, and coordinated federal guidance may help support equitable implementations of authentication and identity proofing, enabling agencies to balance access and security.
The Atlanta Fed’s CLIFF tools provide greater transparency to workers about potential public assistance losses when their earnings increase. We find three broad themes in organization-level implementation of the CLIFF tools: identifying the tar- get population of users; integrating the tool into existing operations; and integrating the tool into coaching sessions.
This report examines how state governments organize and manage human services programs, analyzing various agency structures and their impact on service delivery and coordination with the health care sector.
This visualized report is a first first-of-its-kind view of the state of benefits applications across the nation from a client perspective, including information on application availability online, combined benefit applications, application completion times, as well as login and identity proofing requirements.
This brief examines how state Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) programs adapted policies during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic to address emerging challenges.
This award documentation from the National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO) explains how agencies in Ohio used automation to support administration of public benefits programs.
National Association of State Chief Information Officers (NASCIO)
Article describing the “time tax,” the costs to people applying or benefits in terms of spending substantial amounts of time navigating user-unfriendly interfaces. The article describes the necessity of simplifying safety-net programs and cross-coordinating across various social service programs.
