A guide to navigating New York City’s public services. It was made with and for families of students living in temporary housing or experiencing homelessness and the NYC Department of Education’s Office of Students in Temporary Housing (STH).
The inability to apply for Medicaid and SNAP in person during the COVID-19 pandemic necessitated a new way of interacting with social service agencies through online application submission. States can facilitate this by making online applications and systems more accessible and allowing for telephonic signatures on benefits applications.
Since March 2020, states have been using temporary SNAP (food stamps) flexibility to provide emergency benefit supplements, and ease program administration during the pandemic. These options have allowed states to deliver more food assistance to struggling families, help manage intense administrative demands, and ensure that participants maintain much-needed benefits.
There is significant variation amongst states’ SNAP websites and their online services. This report summarizes the types of services available and which states offer them.
Code for America helped expand GetCalFresh (a service that guides Californians through the SNAP application process and helps government deliver food assistance to people in need) from a small pilot into a statewide service. They also recently concluded a similar pilot in Michigan along with Civilla and the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.
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.
