The first edition of this storytelling series explores the critical role of cognitive accessibility in digital government services through the personal experiences of a scholar and a mother navigating a complex bureaucracy.
This FormFest profile examines how Massachusetts’ Department of Early Education and Care is modernizing its child care benefits system through human-centered design, making verification and application processes simpler, more compassionate, and more efficient for families and staff.
This FormFest profile highlights Rachael Zuppke and Molly Graham’s work to redesign Michigan’s civil court forms using human-centered design, making them more accessible for people who must represent themselves in critical cases like eviction, family law, and guardianship.
In February 2023, the Digital Benefits Network at the Beeck Center for Social Impact + Innovation released a dataset documenting authentication and identity verification requirements that unemployment insurance (UI) applicants encounter across the United States. This resource outlines high-level observations from the data and more information about the research process.
The California Employment Development Department (CA EDD) launched the EDDNext initiative to modernize benefit delivery, focusing on user-centric procurement for a new identity verification system.
The Policy Rules Database (PRD), developed by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta and the National Center for Children in Poverty, consolidates complex rules for major U.S. federal and state benefit programs and tax policies into a standardized, easy-to-use format. This database allows researchers to model public assistance impacts, simulate policy changes, and analyze benefits cliffs across various household scenarios using common rules and language across different programming platforms.
