At Rules as Code Demo Day Executive Director Zareena Mayn and Chief Technology Officer Dize Hacioglu of mRelief demoed the code for their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) eligibility screener. mRelief is a women-led team that provides a web-based and text message-based SNAP eligibility screener to all 53 states and territories that participate in SNAP. They demonstrated how they have modularized their code to host federal program rules and state-specific rules.
This guide highlights best practices in benefits access, showcasing how Michigan, New York City, and San José improve accessibility through plain language, multilingual translation, resident co-creation, and technology tools.
At Rules as Code Demo Day we heard from Song Hia of the NYC Mayor’s Office for Economic Opportunity and Ethan Lo of the NYC Office of Technology and Innovation who demoed the NYC Benefits Platform Screening API which provides machine-readable calculations and criteria for benefits screening that power the ACCESS NYC screening questionnaire. This makes it easier for NYC residents to discover multiple benefits they may be eligible for. The City is now extending the API to support the new MyCity platform, a one-stop shop for all services and benefits.
In response to COVID-19, the Workers Lab and Steady developed the "Income Passport" to streamline gig workers' unemployment benefit applications by pulling income data directly from gig platforms and financial accounts. This tool reduced manual verification time, helped prevent fraud, and improved workers' access to full benefits, with successful tests in Alabama and Louisiana demonstrating significant time savings and improved service delivery.
The California Integrated Travel Project (Cal-ITP) simplifies transit benefits eligibility by developing the Benefits App, which uses Login.gov to securely verify age-based discounts for public transit riders. The project aims to create a standardized, interoperable system for verifying transit benefits, improving accessibility for low-income and special groups while reducing administrative burdens for transit agencies.
The team developed an application to simplify Medicaid and CHIP applications through LLM APIs while addressing limitations such as hallucinations and outdated information by implementing a selective input process for clean and current data.
A recap of the two-day conference focused on charting the course to excellence in digital benefits delivery hosted at Georgetown University and online.
