This Urban Institute article argues that poverty is driven by structural barriers rather than individual choices and advocates for safety net programs that address systemic inequities.
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.
This data playbook created by the California Health and Human services agencies discusses five plays designed to help Departments utilize data to inform program and policy development.
California Health and Human Services Agency (Cal HHS)
Code for America offers government agencies a general overview of getting started with implementing text messaging services for clear, responsive communication during the COVID-19 pandemic.
This academic paper examines how federal privacy laws restrict data collection needed for assessing racial disparities, creating a tradeoff between protecting individual privacy and enabling algorithmic fairness in government programs.
ACM Conference on Fairness, Accountability, and Transparency (ACM FAccT)
This toolkit provides guidance for state and local WIC agencies on implementing digital tools to enhance participant engagement and streamline program operations.
Initially created for and shared with staff at the Administration for Children and Families, this webinar provides an introduction to Universal Design, covering plain language, accessibility, user research, and Agile development.
This report analyzes lawsuits that have been filed within the past 10 years arising from the use of algorithm-driven systems to assess people’s eligibility for, or the distribution of, public benefits. It identifies key insights from the various cases into what went wrong and analyzes the legal arguments that plaintiffs have used to challenge those systems in court.
This webpage links to materials ASPE has prepared as it leads work on how federal agencies and programs can meaningfully and effectively engage people with lived experience.
Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE)
This paper describes the policy choices, business practices, and technology innovations that the State of New Jersey is employing to ensure that the right people get benefits — accurately and on time.
Code for America CEO introduces the Safety Net Innovation Lab in a TED Talk, their initiative to work with state governments to reimagine and rebuild delivery of accessible and equitable benefits. This article also includes the video of Renteria’s talk and a transcript.
This visualized report is a first first-of-its-kind view of the state of benefits applications across the nation from a client perspective, including information on application availability online, combined benefit applications, application completion times, as well as login and identity proofing requirements.
