Due to technology’s disruptive force in society and on the labor force, it is necessary to revisit the relationship between employees, governments, and citizens. This report asserts that the next president should immediately sign two Executive Orders (EOs) to address the current work crisis and the urgent economic emergency that has left Americans evicted, unable to pay bills, make rent, or put food on the table.
This report analyzes lawsuits that have been filed within the past 10 years arising from the use of algorithm-driven systems to assess people’s eligibility for, or the distribution of, public benefits. It identifies key insights from the various cases into what went wrong and analyzes the legal arguments that plaintiffs have used to challenge those systems in court.
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.
This policy blueprint outlines six actionable steps for state governments to improve digital identity infrastructure, focusing on security, equity, innovation, and privacy.
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.
Alluma is a nonprofit that provides digital solutions to simplify eligibility screening and enrollment for social benefit programs, supporting cross-benefit access in 45 counties and two states. Their One-x-Connection product suite streamlines Medicaid and SNAP applications using a business rules engine, with a focus on human-centered design and anonymous, simplified eligibility checks, having helped screen over 10 million individuals and submitted over 67 million applications.
PolicyEngine is a nonprofit that provides a free, open-source web app enabling users in the US and UK to estimate taxes and benefits at the household level, while also simulating the effects of policy changes. By combining tax and benefits data, PolicyEngine helps individuals and policymakers better understand the impacts of existing policies and proposed reforms, using microsimulation models built from legislation and enhanced survey data.
The Digital Service Network (DSN) spoke with two staff members from the Digital Office—Director of Digital Strategy Amy Kirtay and Team Lead Annie Goodwin, to learn more about the Government of British Columbia's Digital Code of Practice.
The Digital Service Network (DSN) spoke with Chief Digital Officer (CDO) Julia Gutiérrez of the Digital Services (DS) Team in the Department of Innovation and Technology (DoIT) and Chief Mariangely Solís Cervera of Boston’s Equity and Inclusion Cabinet.
