Well-designed, user-focused tools that allow for simple application are key to ensuring that families most in need receive the Child Tax Credit. Reaching these households will require a robust effort from the IRS to create user-friendly tools in partnership with organizations with a direct connection to eligible recipients.
This playbook offers a comprehensive guide to enhancing unemployment benefits systems, focusing on claimant-centric approaches, equitable access, and actionable steps for state agencies.
This brief highlights key takeaways from APHSA’s work on young families, starting with an overview of the young families work and its early years, followed by key takeaways and highlights from its final year, ending with opportunities for future work in the young families space.
American Public Human Services Association (APHSA)
This article from Civil Eats explores how expanding online purchasing options for SNAP recipients can improve food security, especially in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) report discusses how reducing administrative burdens in Medicaid can enhance health outcomes and promote racial equity.
We wrapped up Rules as Code Demo Day with Max Ghenis and Nikhil Woodruff, the founders of PolicyEngine. The PolicyEngine web app computes the impact of tax and benefit policy in the US and the UK. With PolicyEngine, anyone can freely calculate their taxes and benefits under current law and customizable policy reforms, and also estimate the society-wide impacts of those reforms. Policymakers and think tanks from across the political spectrum can analyze actual policy. PolicyEngine is built atop the open source OpenFisca US and UK microsimulation models and they are building an open unified data set utilizing data from the Policy Rules Database, Current Population Survey, Survey of Consumer Finances, Consumer Expenditures, tax records, and IRS Public Use File.
This U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) strategy outlines a roadmap for modernizing the Unemployment Insurance (UI) system to enhance efficiency, equity, and access for workers.
MITRE’s Joe Ditre and Frank Ruscil demoed the code for the Comprehensive Careers and Supports for Households (C-CASH) at Rules as Code Demo Day. The MITRE team expanded the accessibility of the Policy Rules Database and the Cost-of-Living Database (the prior demo) by creating a web service API and a front-end Window’s application called C-CASH Analytic Tool (CAT). CAT provides a more scalable, flexible, and portable functionality which allows end-users to generate various households to run eligibility scenarios across different U.S. counties and states. They are currently working to create a national data hub and analytics tool, starting with utilizing U.S. Census data and populating the data warehouse by pushing large amounts of data through the PRD.
Chapin Hall collaborated with national policy experts, practitioners, and young adults with lived experience of homelessness to create a policy toolkit where tax, public benefits, and educational aid implications for young people participating in Direct Cash Transfer (DCT) programs are laid out in one place.
The IRS Direct File Pilot Program After Action Report evaluates the 2024 pilot of a free, government-run tax filing system, assessing taxpayer participation, user experience, and potential for future expansion.
This essay explains why the Center on Privacy & Technology has chosen to stop using terms like "artificial intelligence," "AI," and "machine learning," arguing that such language obscures human accountability and overstates the capabilities of these technologies.
