Comprehensive and sustained improvement in benefits access and customer experience requires changes across policy, operations, technology, staffing, procurement, and more. This guide offers a collection of actions and best practices for states to apply.
This report explores how state and local agencies can enhance customer service in health and human services by implementing technologies such as web-based tools, mobile applications, and call center innovations, aiming to streamline processes and improve client interactions.
Innovators inside and outside of government are working to improve access to the social safety net using data, technology, and design. This report highlights innovations carried out by The Rockefeller Foundation’s Data and Technology grantees from 2018 to 2021, including extraordinary efforts to meet the challenges of the pandemic. Those grantees are: Benefits Data Trust, Code for America, Georgetown University’s Beeck Center for Social Impact and Innovation, U.S. Digital Response, and the Digital Innovation and Governance Initiative at New America. In 2020, these projects secured more than $200 million in benefits for close to 100,000 people across at least 36 states, and helped millions more through policy change, training, and guidance.
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.
This plan promotes responsible AI use in public benefits administration by state, local, tribal, and territorial governments, aiming to enhance program effectiveness and efficiency while meeting recipient needs.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)
Digitizing public benefits policy will make the biggest impact for administrators and Americans, but only if it happens at the highest level of government.
The Administration for Children and Families’ Office of Family Assistance (OFA) worked with 18F to replace its legacy data reporting system through product management training, user research, and an assisted acquisition.
This expansive toolkit provides guidance, real world examples, and resources to help TANF and child support programs engage the families they serve in improving service delivery, policy, and program operations.
This study examines how providing information about administrative burden influences public support for government programs like TANF, showing that awareness of these burdens can increase favorability toward the programs and their recipients.
This article examines how administrative burdens in U.S. social safety net programs have changed over the past 30 years, showing that while average burdens have declined, inequality in who faces these burdens has grown.
The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science
