This academic article develops a framework for evaluating whether and how automated decision-making welfare systems introduce new harms and burdens for claimants, focusing on an example case from Germany.
This study examines the adoption and implementation of AI chatbots in U.S. state governments, identifying key drivers, challenges, and best practices for public sector chatbot deployment.
This quarterly research update aims to highlight key learnings related to improving unemployment insurance (UI) systems in the areas of equity, timeliness, and fraud, and monitor for model UI legislation and policy related specifically to technology. Subscribe to receive future editions.
This policy brief offers recommendations to policymakers relating to the computational and human sides of facial recognition technologies based on a May 2020 workshop with leading computer scientists, legal scholars, and representatives from industry, government, and civil society
This essay explains why the Center on Privacy & Technology has chosen to stop using terms like "artificial intelligence," "AI," and "machine learning," arguing that such language obscures human accountability and overstates the capabilities of these technologies.
This academic paper examines predictive optimization, a category of decision-making algorithms that use machine learning (ML) to predict future outcomes of interest about individuals. Through this examination, the authors explore how predictive optimization can raise concerns that make its use illegitimate and challenge claims about predictive optimization's accuracy, efficiency, and fairness.
Professor Don Moynihan discusses how administrative burden is an effective tool to make it difficult for people to access certain types of benefits, noting that this is particularly harmful to communities of color.
On May 19, 2023, the Digital Benefits Network published a new, open dataset documenting authentication and identity proofing requirements across online SNAP, WIC, TANF, Medicaid, child care (CCAP) applications, and unemployment insurance applications.
An America where no one experiences poverty is possible. Already, the U.S. has programs with the potential to make this vision a reality, including programs that provide cash assistance, like Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). The current TANF program provides very little cash assistance and is marked by stark racial disparities, but it has the potential to reduce child poverty, increase economic security, and advance racial equity. This report offers a vision for an anti-racist approach to the TANF program, with new statutory goals and policy recommendations to advance racial justice.
This primer introduces two foundational software types that can support organizations that are committed to accessible benefits information: content management systems (CMS) and application program interfaces (APIs).