The New Practice Lab partnered with students of the Stanford Public Interest Technology (PIT) Lab to understand how the Racial Equity Framework can shape research by actively identifying anti-Blackness, racial biases, and inequities that exist in public policy. This article documents the findings of the Stanford PIT Lab as they researched how the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) design affects communities of color.
The 33 stories in this collection are short, journalistic reports from interviews with living experts about the experiences of Americans trying to apply for unemployment and other benefits during the COVID-19 pandemic.
This article describes the necessary factors for a public interest technology project to succeed, including leadership support, organizational and team support, proper scoping, time and resources, and a sustainability plan.
This article discusses the various benefits of publicly-funded open-source software. These benefits include fairness and transparency, economic stimulus, and support of the Federal Source Code Policy Agenda.
A primer by New America for government entities thinking about embracing open-source solutions. This report is based on interviews with experts in the field, the organization’s work on piloting open source projects with partners around the world, and a review of nearly 50 reports, documents, and resources on the creation and usage of open source software.
New America spoke to to the people at the frontlines of the pandemic—professional caregivers, family caregivers, parents, and essential workers—to understand the policy interventions people need most. This report discusses ideas for policymakers, private sector leaders, and community innovators to use in pursuit of work-family justice and equity across race, gender, and class.
Clearing applicant backlogs is an important solution to the UI crisis. State governments and federal agencies could facilitate access to public benefits by collaborating to develop interoperable technology platforms that use open source software and modular design. Panelists discuss opportunities to prevent future UI crises by reimagining how governments deliver benefits to their citizens.
The New Practice Lab interviewed Black and Latinx workers that lost their job or income due to COVID-19 and their experience navigating UI. They synthesized their findings in this report, discussing how compounding inequities that exist in the unemployment insurance system make it less accessible for workers of color.
Though the rhetoric of “waste, fraud, and abuse” is ubiquitous when it comes to welfare programs, low-income households receive little relief from benefits programs. Most efforts to make public benefits systems more “efficient” actually just waste time and money in practice. They instead serve to stigmatize low-income families and chip away at the little assistance that remains available to them.
Though the CARES Act provided much-needed relief to millions of Americans, around 5-10 million of the most vulnerable American households have not yet received their full payment. This report lays out a set of technical fixes regarding the delivery of the first stimulus payments, a set of fixes to address other critical tax credits, and several medium-term reforms to increase earned income tax credit (EITC) access for low-income families.
