About 12 million Americans risk missing out on stimulus payments provided through the CARES Act. State outreach efforts are critical to connect people to the $1,200 stimulus payments, and the CBPP lists various resources to assist in state outreach efforts on this webpage.
Some states are adding unnecessary complexity to benefits application processes by requiring Remote Identity Proofing (RIDP) before applying or truncating other business. This paper provides background on RIDP, explains when it’s required, and makes recommendations on how states can preserve the security of online interfaces without the barrier of RIDP.
Policy changes are often dynamic and occur quickly, but they can only create impact once implemented. The Eligibility APIs Initiative at 18F shares an example from their work that shows the potential for rapid, accurate policy implementation as code.
Demand for public benefits is rising in response to continued economic pressure on vulnerable people, in addition to changes in eligibility rules for some safety net programs. This report summarizes existing benefits access efforts, studies the successes and challenges of benefits expansion efforts through a subset of in-depth case studies, and analyzes the potential for sustaining, expanding, and replicating successful efforts.
Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE)
Easy Localization System Access (ELSA) is an Open Source continuous translation and localization system that ensures all content is automatically and continuously kept up to date in the 11 languages most commonly spoken by New Yorkers, using a combination of Neural Machine Translation (NMT) and human Localization vendors.
NYC Mayor's Office of the Chief Technology Officer
18F describes modular contracting, the process of breaking up large, custom software procurements into a small constellation of smaller contracts. Modular procurement requires agile, product thinking, user-centered design, DevSecOps, and loosely-coupled architecture.
Though the rhetoric of “waste, fraud, and abuse” is ubiquitous when it comes to welfare programs, low-income households receive little relief from benefits programs. Most efforts to make public benefits systems more “efficient” actually just waste time and money in practice. They instead serve to stigmatize low-income families and chip away at the little assistance that remains available to them.
The NYC Benefits Screening API provides machine-readable calculations and criteria for benefits screening that power the ACCESS NYC screening questionnaire.
The existing system for evaluating state safety net programs does not adequately capture the human experience of accessing services. This new National Safety Net Scorecard is a more meaningful set of metrics that can effectively asses the true state of the current program delivery landscape and measure progress over time, creating a more human-centered safety net.
