The Texting Playbook provides guidance and well-researched strategies to help state agencies implement texting in support of Medicaid, SNAP, WIC, and other benefits programs. It provides an overview of how to start texting clients; the types of messages to send, including real examples; Federal Communications Commision (FCC) policy guidance; how to encourage opt-ins and collect consent; how to avoid coming across as spam; and a cost analysis of texting.
This article examines how outdated state unemployment insurance (UI) systems struggled during the COVID-19 pandemic, leading to delays, technical failures, and widespread frustration for job seekers.
This post argues that for the types of large-scale, organized fraud attacks that many state benefits systems saw during the pandemic, solutions grounded in cybersecurity methods may be far more effective than creating or adopting automated systems.
This guide is intended to provide everything else, with a focus on the basics of UI technology projects, guidance on standards for equitable uses of technology, and strategies for how to have a positive impact on these projects.
This 2023 presentation from the California Employment Development Department details the user personas the agency used to evaluate vendor proposals for a new identity proofing contract.
State of California Employment Development Department (EDD)
This GitHub repository includes resources that users of the UI wage data toolkit may find helpful. It covers a variety of topics, including equity, data security, programming, and data QC tips. It also serves as a place for our team to continue to post information that the TANF Data Collaborative (TDC) pilot sites found useful during our partnerships with them.
The NYC Benefits Screening API provides machine-readable calculations and criteria for benefits screening that power the ACCESS NYC screening questionnaire.
In response to COVID-19, the Workers Lab and Steady developed the "Income Passport" to streamline gig workers' unemployment benefit applications by pulling income data directly from gig platforms and financial accounts. This tool reduced manual verification time, helped prevent fraud, and improved workers' access to full benefits, with successful tests in Alabama and Louisiana demonstrating significant time savings and improved service delivery.
This paper discusses the country’s chronic underinvestment in children and resulting outcomes, including new data on poverty rates among young children, is inextricable from the prospects of young children; and the remarkably comprehensive pandemic-era response policies, including which changes contributed most to reducing child poverty.
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.
