The Digital Service Network (DSN) spoke with Ashley O’Brien, user experience designer for the City of Saint Paul, MN, about the flexible and resourceful approach she took to reach people across the city.
SNAP Waivers and Adaptations During the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Survey of State Agency Perspectives in 2020 is a study conducted by the Johns Hopkins Institute for Health and Social Policy (IHSP) based at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the American Public Human Services Association (APHSA). This research seeks to understand perspectives from state SNAP administrators on the successes, challenges, and lessons learned from waivers and flexibilities used to preserve equitable access to SNAP during the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on state agency survey responses, this report summarizes key findings from the first calendar year of pandemic response and provides policy considerations for the future of SNAP. This research was supported by Healthy Eating Research, a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.
Johns Hopkins Institute for Health and Social Policy
The vast fraud committed through the use of stolen and synthetic identities in UI programs has spotlighted the need for updated identity fraud detection mechanisms. As states are implementing new technologies and systems, they need to consider the ways in which they are impacting racial inequities in UI benefits.
This brief estimates of benefits, costs, interactions with other means tested programs, and impact on poverty for the paid family and medical leave program.
An event recap from one of FormFest 2024's breakout sessions featuring speakers from South Bend Indiana and others working on creating accessible legal forms.
This session from FormFest 2024 features the South Carolina Early Childhood Advisory Council’s work developing a single portal to integrate applications for publicly funded programs and services, and the office of Federal Student Aid’s work on the FAFSA form.
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.
This article discusses Code for America’s research into the user experience of applying or Medicaid, SNAP, TANF, WIC, and LIHEAP in the United States. They found that user experience applying for benefits programs varies greatly by (and often within) each state.
The team developed an application to simplify Medicaid and CHIP applications through LLM APIs while addressing limitations such as hallucinations and outdated information by implementing a selective input process for clean and current data.
