This session from FormFest 2024 focused on human centered form improvements from the City of Reykjavik and the German Digital Service’s form simplification project.
This resource provides an overview of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Employment & Training (SNAP E&T) program, highlighting state implementation strategies, funding mechanisms, and policy opportunities to strengthen workforce participation among SNAP recipients.
American Public Human Services Association (APHSA)
This resource allows policymakers, employers, benefits providers, and researchers assess benefits performance for constituents and identify opportunities in market and policy innovation to ensure equitable benefits distribution.
This report recommends updating the methodology used by the Census Bureau to calculate the Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) to reflect household basic needs and replace the current Official Poverty Measure as the primary statistical measure of poverty. The report assesses the strengths and weaknesses of the SPM and provides recommendations for updating its methodology and expanding its use in recognition of the needs of most American families such as medical care, childcare, and housing costs.
National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
This brief examines how state Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) programs adapted policies during the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic to address emerging challenges.
This report examines the phenomenon of "churn" in public benefit programs, where eligible participants temporarily lose benefits due to administrative processes, analyzing its impact on both recipients and state agencies, and suggesting strategies to reduce its occurrence.
This guide provides practical insights for benefits administrators on redesigning benefits systems using human-centered design to ensure all eligible residents can access crucial social safety net resources.
Policymakers, program administrators, federal leaders, researchers, and advocates are increasingly focused on using administrative data to build evidence for improving government programs. Achieving this goal requires accessible data sources and the capacity to use them, yet stakeholders have little information about the baseline level of state capacity in these areas. How does one measure concepts such as “effective data use” and “analytic capacity?” This brief reports findings from a pioneering and comprehensive needs assessment that examined the capacity of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) programs in 54 U.S. states and territories to analyze data used for program improvement, monitoring, and evidence-building. The needs assessment provides a foundation for technical assistance and continued improvement for the TANF program and may also provide valuable insights and frameworks for other state-administered human services programs.
A modernized public benefits system would better serve program participants, administrators, policy makers, and taxpayers. This paper proposes a set of principles both define the desired future state and outline the values that shape decision making along the way. Practices describe the processes needed to achieve modernization.
The report highlights that many eligible low-income children are not receiving WIC benefits during the COVID-19 pandemic, with participation rates varying significantly by state and lagging behind programs like Medicaid and SNAP.
