This report outlines key lessons and recommendations from Code for America's collaboration with the Voluntary Income Tax Assistance program, which served over 800,000 clients via GetYourRefund.org.
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.
This policy report offers recommendations for improving digital identity practices in the United States, emphasizing the role of government in creating secure, accessible digital identity resources.
This policy brief outlines how improved data sharing between federal agencies, state and local governments, and institutions can leverage existing data from other benefits programs to streamline eligibility processes and benefits uptake for the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) and other programs.
Passing a major new social program like paid family and medical leave (PFML) is only the first step in creating change. To achieve real impact, PFML programs must be well implemented — and as more and more states pass PFML programs, the urgency of such good implementation has never been higher. In 2019, New America staffed a discovery sprint team to explore New Jersey’s pioneering PFML program, using a mixture of beneficiary interviews, data analysis, and business processing mapping. Based on that research, this report outlines key implementation learnings for administrators in other states, focusing on: (a) communicating about PFML, (b) outreach strategies, (c) applications and processing, and (d) IT infrastructure.
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.
This report outlines how modernizing unemployment insurance (UI) technology with a worker-centered approach can improve access, efficiency, and equity in the UI system.
The U.S. Department of Labor is working with states, territories, and the public to develop strategies to continuously improve the nation’s unemployment insurance (UI) systems.
This article reviews two examples of how Nava has used open-source technologies to bring human-centered testing practices to government services software.
This guide touches on everything from Code for America’s core research philosophy, to our approach to ethics and trauma-informed research, to specific research methods. It also includes plenty of practical tips on planning and executing research, as well as how to synthesize your findings into action.
This webinar provides insight on behavioral science concepts and how states can put such ideas into practice to tailor engagement, messaging, and independence planning, as well as promote participation in SNAP E&T programs.
