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).
NYC Opportunity collaborated with the Administration for Child Services (ACS) to design a family-centered process for prevention services, addressing confusion and lack of choice in the current system. By creating tools like the Provider Profile and Family Voice booklet, the team empowered families to choose providers based on their needs while ensuring their feedback reaches ACS. The project aims to improve family experiences and communication with ACS, with plans to expand through testing and future innovations like a web portal.
City of Saint Paul's website for community members to sign up to participate in paid research opportunities in order to test and provide feedback on the design of digital services and products.
The Equitable Community Engagement Toolkit is a toolkit created by City of Philadelphia engagement practitioners and community members to help improve equitable collaboration with the community the City serves.
City of Philadelphia Office of Civic Engagement and Volunteer Service
Guidance for City of Long Beach, CA staff on how to uplift community voices through user research to create services that are accessible to all City residents.
The Policy2Code Prototyping Challenge explored utilizing generative AI technology to translate U.S. government policies for public benefits into plain language and code, culminating in a Demo Day where twelve teams showcased their projects for feedback and evaluation.
This 2015 project presentation outlines the vision, research, and product requirements for DAHLIA, San Francisco’s online platform to centralize and simplify affordable housing searches and applications.
San Francisco Mayor's Office of Housing and Community Development
This exploratory brief outlines the City of Boston’s phased plan to build a digital system for scheduling, managing, and reporting mattress and bulky item recycling pickups.
beta.gouv.fr, a French government incubator, developed Mes Aides, an online benefits simulator launched in 2014 to help residents assess their eligibility for various social programs, addressing the issue of unclaimed benefits. The tool, built with open-source technology, enabled users to quickly estimate their potential benefits but was later integrated into a broader platform in 2020 following internal government disputes over authority.
This session from FormFest 2024 focused on how governments are scaling their SNAP benefits programs, with Maryland’s improved integrated benefits application and the Office of Evaluation Sciences’ changes to questions on the SNAP application.
