The experience of the COVID-19 pandemic and its induced recession underscored the crucial importance of unemployment insurance (UI) to workers, and to the stability of the American economy. Temporary federal expansions of unemployment systems during the pandemic showed how they can quickly be scaled to increase benefit levels and to include categories of workers who were not previously eligible, such as the self-employed, caregivers, and low-wage workers. And, states showed that separate programs can be set up to provide similar benefits to workers who are explicitly excluded from unemployment insurance—in particular immigrants who do not have a documented immigration status.
Building modular, open-source, human-centered software is necessary to create equitable government services fit for the digital age. Nava emphasizes addressing large scale digital service challenges by building and releasing small, modular software components that are loosely-coupled by well-defined APIs. This enables agencies to quickly and conistently deliver services that help people immediately, whilst also building a flexible foundation for long-term technical evolution.
Report by the Aspen Institute discussing Benefits21, a multi-stakeholder, multi-faceted initiative to integrate and modernize benefits systems. This paper provides an overview of Benefits21, along with a discussion of the shortcomings of current public and private benefit systems.
This scoring matrix from the California Employment Development Department (EDD) shows how the agency evaluated vendor proposals for a new identity proofing approach, based on vendors' ability to serve different user personas.
State of California Employment Development Department (EDD)
This report details the use of the historic investment of $1 billion in funding from the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) to the Department of Labor and state unemployment (UI) agencies to modernize state UI programs.
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.
This webinar session discusses the importance of using CX metrics to guide agency-level decisions and how to gather, analyze, and apply customer feedback to optimize products and services.
This section of the Building Resilience plan outlines strategies to expand access to unemployment insurance (UI) for underserved populations and improve benefit adequacy through system reform, outreach, and data-driven equity efforts.
