The Digital Benefit Network's Digital Identity Community of Practice held a session to hear considerations from civil rights technologists and human-centered design practitioners on ways to ensure program security while simultaneously promoting equity, enabling accessibility, and minimizing bias.
This case study explores how the City of Akron developed a community tree map to engage residents in urban forestry efforts, enabling them to identify, grow, and care for trees in their neighborhoods.
This is the summary version of a report that documents four experiments exploring if AI can be used to expedite the translation of SNAP and Medicaid policies into software code for implementation in public benefits eligibility and enrollment systems under a Rules as Code approach.
This is a searchable tool that compiles and categorizes over 4,700 policy recommendations submitted in response to the U.S. government's 2025 Request for Information on artificial intelligence policy.
We wrapped up Rules as Code Demo Day with Max Ghenis and Nikhil Woodruff, the founders of PolicyEngine. The PolicyEngine web app computes the impact of tax and benefit policy in the US and the UK. With PolicyEngine, anyone can freely calculate their taxes and benefits under current law and customizable policy reforms, and also estimate the society-wide impacts of those reforms. Policymakers and think tanks from across the political spectrum can analyze actual policy. PolicyEngine is built atop the open source OpenFisca US and UK microsimulation models and they are building an open unified data set utilizing data from the Policy Rules Database, Current Population Survey, Survey of Consumer Finances, Consumer Expenditures, tax records, and IRS Public Use File.
At Rules as Code Demo Day Seth Hartig from the National Center for Children in Poverty (NCCP) and Bank Street College demoed the Policy Rules Database (PRD), a collaborative effort between the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta and the NCCP. The primary purpose of the PRD is to simplify the interpretation of all programs by creating a common structure and a common terminology. The repository allows for research on public assistance programs and tax policies, and helps users model benefits cliffs on career pathways. The PRD is supported by a technical manual with pseudocode that helps guide integration and usage in other platforms.
This Urban Institute report explores the impact of benefit cliffs, plateaus, and trade-offs on families receiving public assistance, examining how changes in earnings affect access to essential benefits like SNAP, Medicaid, and housing subsidies.
Through the Coordinating SNAP & Nutrition Supports program, Mecklenburg County, NC leveraged a Food Security Navigator model and data analysis to increase access to nutrition supports. This report documents best practices and lessons learned from their project.
American Public Human Services Association (APHSA)
A modification of Bolder Advocacy’s ACT!Quick capacity self-assessment tool to incorporate additional equity-centered capacities, engage community authentically, and conduct research in culturally responsive ways.
The ubiquity of mobile devices makes it imperative to build “mobile first” services, i.e. services built with the expectation that they will primarily be accessed on mobile devices. This article also outlines important considerations and suggestions for implementing mobile-first user interfaces.
