BenCon 2024 Recap

The Digital Benefits Network (DBN) at the Beeck Center for Social Impact + Innovation hosted the Digital Benefits Conference (BenCon) for a second year on September 17–18, 2024. This year we welcomed more than 200 practitioners from more than 100 organizations in Washington, D.C., at the new McCourt School of Public Policy on Georgetown University’s Capitol Campus. Nearly 600 practitioners from more than 350 organizations signed-up to join plenary sessions online. 

BenCon 2024 brought together government leaders, cross-sector practitioners, researchers, advocates, and students who are improving digital delivery of vital programs including SNAP, WIC, Medicaid, TANF, unemployment insurance, child care, basic income, and more. Together we explored core topics to navigate accessible, effective, and equitable technology in public benefits. Core themes included improving digital service delivery, digital identity, automation and artificial intelligence, and timely topics in public benefits. We sought to position ourselves in the moment we’re in—socially, politically, and technologically—to continue to chart the course to excellence in digital benefits delivery.

You can find links to individual talks below, on the BenCon page, and also watch our playlist on Youtube. 

Moment We’re In

BenCon 2024 opened with a panel of non-profit executives sharing their perspectives on potential tailwinds and headwinds ahead in Digital Public Benefits: Outlook 2025. Lynn Overmann, executive director of the Beeck Center, Amanda Renteria, CEO of Code for America, and Hillary Hartley, CEO of U.S. Digital Response each bring a wealth of experience working inside and alongside government at various levels. They shared their organizations’ commitments to partnership in improving delivery. 

“It is not a secret to anyone active in this space that there is not one single organization that is going to solve these problems, and there is certainly not one single nonprofit organization that is going to solve the problems. What we really need is deep capacity and partnership with our government partners who ultimately deliver these benefits.”

Lynn Overmann, Beeck Center Executive Director

“The idea that we have a new generation not just thinking about public service, but thinking about the importance of policy and how we do implementation. And so what gives me a ton of hope is it’s our turn, as we think about the next generation, no matter who wins, we now have a whole new generation who understands the importance of policy.”

Amanda Renteria, Code for America CEO

“If we’re successful, residents across the country are going to get what they need from you, from our benefits teams, from government services, and we’ll be delivering what people need.”

Hillary Hartley, U.S. Digital Response CEO

On Day 2, the conversation broadened to include a diverse set of voices in the Digital Public Benefits Access Agenda: Conversations about the Road Ahead breakout session. Eleven leaders from the federal government, state government, nonprofits, and vendor partners came together to answer questions about the opportunities and challenges ahead and how we might work collectively across the ecosystem to keep improving digital benefits access. This roundtable discussion encapsulated all the BenCon themes and dove deeper into conversation, including answering audience questions about user-centric design, the role of AI, cross-sector collaboration, changing working relationships between federal and state government, state capacity, and more.

“As states are rebuilding their systems out of the pandemic, they are centering in new ways the experiences of users and increasing what they measure, not just measuring how long it takes a payment to get out to an eligible individual, but how long does it take to complete an application? How many people are calling in and can’t reach someone to talk to? And we are seeing, we’ve put that challenge out to the states to measure their work in different ways, and we’re seeing some of the projects we’re funding show measurable improvements.”

Andrew Stettner, U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration

Mission Driven Bureaucrats

We heard from four public sector leaders who are driving transformative change inside their governments. In Digital Benefits Beacons: Where Policy Meets Practice, Julia Dale, Michigan’s Unemployment Insurance Agency (UIA) director, shared how she is stewarding the UIA through transition by channeling lived experience and leading with hope, grit, and values.  She also shared that one of her proudest partnerships is with Detroit-based, nonprofit design organization, Civilla, which helped UIA streamline services for claimants and employers using a human-centered design approach.  

“We launched a long season of innovation, transformation and modernization. These changes weren’t always easy to implement, they are the result of making hard decisions with tenacious empathy. It’s a combination of hard-earned resilience and heart rooted grace.”

Julia Dale, Michigan Unemployment Insurance Agency Director

Virginia Department of Social Services’ SNAP Program Manager Michele Thomas shared how the Commonwealth of Virginia was able to feed more than 700,000 kids in the first year of Sun Bucks, their summer EBT child nutrition program. Virginia rose to the challenge of launching this new program by leveraging political will and wide-ranging partnerships to make the majority of eligible families categorically eligible, so they would not have to formally apply to receive Sun Bucks.

“Virginia said, ‘yes, we believe we can do this.’ Let us see what we can do. We have lots of kids counting on us. It is probably the number one success I’ve had in my career as a public administrator. We are very proud of that pumping in about $85 million of benefits to our Commonwealth…my superpower is that I feed families and I make a difference every day.”

Michele Thomas, Virginia Department of Social Services, SNAP Manager

In Takeoff Velocity and Rocket Fuel: How to Continue Forward Momentum, Darnell Sessoms, product director for the New York City Mayor’s Office for Economic Opportunity shared My File NYC—a document storage and sharing mobile-first website that provides NYC residents a safe and secure place to store vital documents and an easy way to share them when applying for City services. He shared how their team has built trust with residents and public servants, utilized open source code, and partnered to achieve success in iterative phases of development. Ruthie Nachmany of the New Jersey Office of Innovation shared how improvements to the state’s unemployment insurance system has been a catalyst for developing products, platforms, and processes that they have been able to scale and extend for other programs across the state, including a new interactive voice response (IVR) system, a claim status tool, improvements in digital identity, and experiments in using AI to improve benefits delivery and access.

“You don’t need to start from scratch. We didn’t start from scratch. We did end up replatforming and rebuilding, but we were only able to do this work because we had a really strong, like foundational code base that we were able to get from open source. We want to be able to give back that open source code base.”

Darnell Sessoms, NYC Mayor’s Office for Economic Opportunity

“When I think about takeoff velocity, I think about how we find small improvements and start getting feedback quickly, and then that rocket fuel that helps us keep going is finding shared patterns within our program areas and also cross program adoption, so we can develop better solutions, more easily, more quickly, and keep going in that feedback cycle there and then, when we think about continuing forward momentum. I think about how we can help other programs build off of the work we’re doing, how we can build in public, how we can all support each other in this work, so that we can ultimately provide forward momentum for the people that we serve.”

Ruthie Nachmany, New Jersey Office of Innovation

In Mission Driven Bureaucrats, Georgetown University professor and author Dan Honig shared insights from his new book by the same name, which explores the power of purpose in public service. He argues that the key to better government lies not in stricter controls and more rigorous oversight, but in empowerment and trust. 

“If we have people in the public service who want to do the thing that is the thing their agency or team or organization is doing well, then we need to manage perhaps in a different way. We need to support that motivation by allowing autonomy, cultivating competence and creating connections to peers and purpose.”

Dan Honig, Georgetown University Professor and Author, Mission Driven Bureaucrats

Improving Digital Service Delivery

Improving digital service delivery was a continuous thread throughout BenCon 2024.  In Friction! What Makes Getting Public Benefits So Hard and How Understanding Administrative Burdens Can Increase Access, Don Moynihan of University of Michigan and the Better Government Lab shared specific burdens and how to measure their impacts.

“Frameworks help to give us a language to talk about these policy problems and to talk to one another about the administrative burdens that rise in government and how to solve them. Just being able to have those conversations that maybe weren’t happening 10 or 15 years ago is a huge part of actually making progress.”

Don Moynihan, Better Government Lab, University of Michigan

Building on the DBN’s Summer of CX series, in-person participants were able to explore a future state in the Digital Service Delivery 2030: If Everything Worked Imaginarium. Participants were invited to imagine what it might look like if everything we knew about exemplary customer experience was applied in public benefits programs. The session kicked off with a group exercise sharing outside-the-box examples of people’s best digital customer experiences, focusing on aspects such as ease of use, navigation, seamlessness, efficiency, accuracy, and trustworthiness. Participants added their input to a what’s working example wall. Combining large and small group discussion, expert customer experience leaders Sylvie Williams with the IRS Taxpayer Experience, Alex Pandel with the GSA Public Benefits Studio, and Rachael Carson from Civilla helped participants think expansively about technology and processes that are working in digital customer experience and how to both supercharge these interventions and/or unblock existing challenges. 

Additionally, four non-profit organizations—Civilla, Public Policy Lab, Blue Ridge Labs, and the American Public Human Services Association (APHSA)—jointly presented a workshop, Strategies for Engaging Lived Expertise, sharing diverse approaches for engaging beneficiaries to shape public benefits delivery. Each organization presented different ways their organizations have engaged individuals with lived expertise in their work, from deep research, to standing up advisory boards or embedding strategic consultants, or recruiting individuals to engage in feedback and testing sessions. After the presentations, Lena Selzer and Eesha Patne from Civilla facilitated an interactive activity that asked participants to reflect on how they could deploy different strategies for engaging lived expertise in their own organizations’ work.

In-person participants were also able to join Solutions for Better Benefits Systems: A Collaborative Product Exploration Workshop hosted by the General Service Administration’s Technology Transformation Services Public Benefits Studio. Building off of their work on Notify.gov, Deepra Yusef and Alex Pandel shared current thinking on potential solutions towards improving application processes, streamlining eligibility, and prioritizing the beneficiary experiences. They facilitate interactive conversations to get insights and feedback from participants.

Automation and AI

As artificial intelligence solutions have become commercially available, there is growing interest in applying them in human services and public benefits delivery. At BenCon2024, we first explored AI through a policy lens in Emerging Legal and Policy Trends in State and Federal AI Governance. The session opened with a presentation by Quinn Anex-Ries, policy analyst at the Center for Democracy & Technology, which explored the more than 40 bills introduced across all 50 states in the 2024 legislative session, executive orders in 12 states and Washington, D.C.,  as well as federal movement via an executive order, Office of Management and Budget guidance, and agency plans. Quinn was then joined by panelists to share their work and perspectives including: Harrison MacRae, director of emerging technologies for the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, which released one of the first AI executive orders; Nikki Zeichner, transformation officer, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, which recently developed a plan for responsible use of AI in public benefits; and Grant Fergusson, Equal Justice Works fellow and counsel at the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), which recently created an AI Legislation Scorecard. All panelists stressed the need for experimentation and learning across levels of government, within teams and agencies, and with external research and development partners.

“We are also seeing many states start to grapple with new and creative uses of AI and automation, things like generative AI for transcribing conversations or providing notices to applicants or recipients of benefits. Many of these uses have been going on in some form or fashion for several decades, but now that we’re seeing the complexity of these systems change and by and large, a kind of shift toward procurement of private sector systems, some of the changes in how we use these systems come to the fore, are we considering the types of data that these private vendors are using, and are there any sorts of use limitations or oversight that we need as government officials to make sure that the vendor systems are operating the way that we think they are.”

Grant Fergusson, Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC)

“I wanted to change our organizational mindset from our website being an IT project that’s administered by the IT department to a digital tool that is easy to use, everyone is empowered to work on, and something we can all work to continuously improve.”

Harrison MacRae, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania

“Part of the things that we need to figure out are not just how to regulate new technologies, but we need to figure out how they fit into our practices and what can go wrong before we put things into production. A lot of folks here are doing work to prototype and experiment with state agencies, and I’m really focused on working with HHS to try to create space for that at the federal level, so that we can support teams within HHS, but then also maybe even support folks at the state level in some way through the work that we might be able to do.”

Nikki Zeichner, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

The DBN has been host to some of the latest experimentation through the Policy2Code Prototyping Challenge, in which 12 cross-sector teams used generative AI in public benefits use cases. The challenge culminated in Policy2Code Demo Day at BenCon where each team gave short presentations on their experiments and initial findings.

In AI Technologies Today, Georgetown University Computer Science Professor Sarah Bargal provided foundational definitions and historical context for artificial intelligence, machine learning, and deep learning. She then shared how these technologies can be used for good and harm through examples which explored authentication and adversarial attacks, deep fakes and image manipulation, generative models and misinformation, personalization and image generation, and the ethical implications of concept erasing in models.

We closed our AI-focused main stage sessions with Unpacking How Long-Standing Civil Rights Protections Apply to Emerging Technologies like AI, which brought Elizabeth Laird, director of the Equity in Civic Technology  Initiative at the Center for Democracy and Technology, Henry Claypool, technology policy consultant, and Clarence Okoh, senior attorney at the Georgetown Law Center on Privacy and Technology together in conversation. The panelists provided context on the judicial, policy, and regulatory perspectives for civil rights protections. They also shared examples of data sharing and algorithmic systems that can cause harm, including predictive policing using student data and functional assessments for Medicaid services. They closed with advice to government administrators, including forming an inclusive team with diverse backgrounds, finding civil rights experts in your state’s Attorney General Office and civil society organizations, and not relying on technology to solve social problems. They urged individual and collective action to ensure that civil rights are protected as new technologies are developed.

What is at stake? Who is it at stake for? What future are we going to live in? Are we going to allow for histories of scientific racism to define our future, or can we chart a new path that lays civil and human rights at the foundation to build the type of society that all of our communities deserve?”

Clarence Okoh, Senior Attorney at the Georgetown Law Center on Privacy and Technology

“Disability is a really heterogeneous experience. It’s different people with different things in their lives—from mental health to developmental disabilities, paralysis, history of chronic health conditions—people are now identifying as disabled people, and all of this is really undercounted and still heavily stigmatized, so we don’t show up in the data in meaningful ways.”

Henry Claypool, Technology Policy Consultant

In-person participants were able to join two AI-focused workshops. In Design Patterns for AI Systems That People Can Trust, facilitator Valeria Adani, interim CEO at Projects by IF in the United Kingdom, underscored the importance of building and maintaining trust when designing new technologies, including AI. Adani introduced participants to a catalog of design patterns (“A repeatable solution to a common user problem”) that can be used to promote trust, transparency, and accountability in automated systems. Participants were then asked to work collaboratively on different public benefits delivery scenarios to identify critical moments when trust could be broken or strengthened in a technical system, and how to use different design patterns to improve trust.

In Leveraging Human-Centered AI in Government, facilitators Jenn Thom, Eleanor Davis, and Danny Mintz from Code for America led participants through a hands-on workshop where they provided an overview of what exactly AI is and what it can do, provided a set of guiding principles to discern when AI is an appropriate tool to solve a real human problem (and when it’s not!), and presented frameworks for applying risk-mitigation strategies to the procurement, deployment, and evaluation of AI technology. 

Access, Security, and Accuracy

The second day of BenCon 2024 opened with a panel of government leaders in conversation on The Integral Pillars for Digital Benefits Delivery: Access, Security, and Accuracy. Patrick McLoughlin, executive director of MDThink, the State of Maryland’s shared technology platform that integrates multiple public benefits programs, outlined the State’s efforts to break down silos between agencies and minimize the amount of data that members of the public must provide to access services. Speaking about the power of digital identity to enable access to services, Director of Login.gov at the General Services Administration Hanna Kim emphasized Login’s commitment to “build[ing] a technology that is a more human experience,” and leverage existing touchpoints that individuals have with government to make identity services accessible. Panelist Naomi Lefkowitz, manager for the Cybersecurity and Privacy Applications Group at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), spoke to the agency’s work to make privacy—and more recently, equity—central to their guidelines and standards, and pointed to the potential tension between privacy and interoperability when it comes to digital identity credentials. Lefkowitz applauded agencies’ efforts to share the minimum information needed to make benefits determinations or understand who someone is. Collectively, the three panelists emphasized the importance of thinking about the end users’ experiences with government systems, and working across teams and agencies to design processes that create less friction for users, while protecting privacy and data security.

 “As is often said by the Secretary of the [Maryland] Department of Human Services, Rafael Lopez, we often require customers to prove their poverty, or to prove that they are eligible for these services when we already have the data… we need to culturally change that.”

Patrick McLoughlin, Executive Director of MDThink

As the panelists also underscored, digital identity plays a key role in supporting access, security, and accuracy. In Balancing Security and Customer Experience During Digital Account Creation and Authentication for Benefits Delivery, Kennedy Alexis, U.S. Digital Corps fellow with the General Services Administration, and Yan-Yin Choy, product manager with Nava PBC, shared insights from the Federal Facing a Financial Shock Initiative’s research into authentication and account creation in state benefits applications. Their presentation highlighted insights from a forthcoming playbook focused on digital account management in online SNAP and Medicaid portals. Their research found “states want clarity on when to trigger authentication and account creation in the [application workflow] to balance usability and security,” Choy said.

Elizabeth Bynum Sorrell and Quinny Sanchez Lopez closed the session with Digital Identity Updates from the Digital Benefits Network, including an announcement of the DBN’s new Digital Identity Community of Practice, updates on our collaborative research with NIST and Center for Democracy and Technology, and forthcoming updates to our digital identity in public benefits data set.

In person participants were also able to join the Digital Identity for Public Benefits workshop to help inform the collaborative research project with NIST and CDT. The project aims to build resources that empower state benefits administering agencies to make human-centered and risk-based assessments of when and how authentication and identity proofing should be implemented in digital benefits delivery.

Visions for the Future

We closed BenCon with reflections on the conference and Visions for the Future of public benefits delivery from different vantage points.

“I hope that access to public benefits is curated to focus on the individuals who are the most underserved and the most difficult to reach. I think that we have come a long way, and it’s really great when we hear folks talk about how their system works great for 80% or 90% of participants, but it’s that last 20%, that last 10% that is the hardest job to get done, but also the most important. Because in my personal opinion, unless you are serving those folks, you don’t have a successful program.”

Julia Simon-Mishel, Philadelphia Legal Assistance

“I see the future of benefits delivery as being and continuing to be tenacious and being really personal. We’re talking about real people, real experiences… I just feel really hopeful with all of the peaceful warriors in the room that have been fighting against the accrete for decades, that this will be a ubiquitous future, one that doesn’t have to be deserved for some and fought for others.”

Ayushi Roy, New America New Practice Lab

“When I think of the future, I remain optimistic. I sat for the last two days listening to people cast vision for what can be and what should be, and so I think that’s what I walk out of here thinking, is that we need leaders, especially in government, at the state, local and federal level, who are not only willing to cast a vision of what it can be, but who are willing to be gritty and do the hard work of executing that vision. And I think the thing I take away most is that there is a community out here of partners that we can tap into, and I want to encourage us all to do that, to tap into the knowledge and the expertise and the partnerships that exist. Because if we can cast that vision and partner with one another, I think there’s a lot more than we can do than sitting in our silos, operating in our own little spheres of influence, and bemoaning what isn’t. This was a great gathering of like minded leaders and individuals who are all committed to seeing excellence.”

Julia Dale, Michigan Unemployment Insurance Agency Director

Thank you to everyone who joined us for an inspiring BenCon 2024 to chart the course to excellence in benefits delivery. We hope you continue to engage with the DBN through our newsletters, Digital Government Hub, research, communities of practice, and events.

Thank You Speakers

BenCon included 90 speakers — thank you all for generously sharing your ideas and expertise!

Valeria Adani, Kenny Ahmed, Kennedy Alexis, Julia Almendarez Dale, Tina Amper, Quinn Anex-Ries, Sarah Bargal, Kevin Boyer, Nicholas Burka, Elizabeth Bynum Sorrell, Rachael Carson, Alexander Chen, Yan-Yin Choy, Henry Claypool, Eleanor Davis, Katya Delak, Anjelika Deogirikar Grossman, Ankita Dhussa, Sarah Esty, Grant Fergusson, Matt Friedman, Ryan Galluzzo, Andrew Gamino-Cheong, Alessandra Garcia Guevara, Max Ghenis, Jason Goodman, Ryan Hansz, Hillary Hartley, Mark Headd, Rebecca Heywood, Deirdre Holub, Dan Honig, Sha Hwang, Brittany Jones, Ariel Kennan, Hanna Kim, Elizabeth Laird, Connie LaSalle, Jacqui Lee, Naomi Lefkovitz, Eugene Lewis, Sophie Logan, Harrison MacRae, Jess Maneely, Shanti Mathew, Chelsea Mauldin, Morgan McKinney, Patrick McLoughlin, Daniel Mintz, Khristian Monterroso, Harold Moore, Donald Moynihan, Ruthie Nachmany, Clarence Okoh, Lynn Overmann, Alex Pandel, Eesha Patne, Minh Tam Pham, Jennifer Phillips, Louise Pocock, Hannah Quay-de la Vallee, Harshit Raj, Shreenath Regunathan, Amanda Renteria, Michael Ribar, Madi Rogers, Belinda Rodríguez, Ayushi Roy, Quinny Sanchez Lopez, Navneet Sandhu, Lena Selzer, Darnell Sessoms, Julia Simon-Mishel, Lisa Singh, Symonne Singleton, Evelyn Siu, Andrew Stettner, Stacy Taylor, Jenn Thom, Michele Thomas, Sergey Tsoy, Jennifer Wagner, Sylvie Williams, Sylvie Willliams, Jerry Wilson, Yuan Xu, Meg Young, Deepra Yusuf, and Nikki Zeichner.

Thank You Team & Partners

Thank you to the Beeck Center team and colleagues for supporting BenCon. 

• Digital Benefits Network team: Ariel Kennan, Jennifer Phillips, Elizabeth Bynum Sorrell, Quinny Sanchez Lopez, Tina Amper, and Elisa Fox 
• Digital Service Network team:  Kirsten Wyatt, Michaela Caudill, Kelly Henderson, Colleen Pulawski, and Ashlee Sellung
• Comms: Jessica Yabsley, Ashleigh Fryer, and Gerard Ramos
• Operations: Molly Porter, Angela Carabelas, and Jack Dobkin
• Lynn Overmann, Executive Director
• Staff and student volunteers: Isaac Yoder, Grace Lacy-Hansell, Lucie Bonneville, Jason Goodman, Shanelle Roberson, Miranda Xiong, Olivia Zhao, Tuqa Alibadi, Neha Jampala, Marcus Courtney, Adam Bobrow, and Aaron Snow

Thank you to our incredible partners and contractors. 

• Stacy Cervantes, event manager
• Bluestreet Productions, AV 
• Jessica Latos, photography
• Justin Duncan, graphic design
• Aramark, catering
• McCourt School of Public Policy & Capitol Campus team