The Digital Benefits Network (DBN) at the Beeck Center for Social Impact + Innovation at Georgetown University supports government in delivering public benefits services and technology that are accessible, effective, and equitable in order to ultimately increase economic opportunity.
In 2024, the DBN grew our team and activities to further meet network needs as the place for connections, sharing ideas, and exchanging questions on digital benefits. Following a collaborative planning process in 2023, we began operating in a new strategic framework which emphasizes increasing ecosystem coordination, collaboration, and alignment, and building community to enable implementation. We have been able to expand our resources and tools, offer new events and programming, establish new coordination bodies, and sharpen our peer communities.
Scenes from BenCon 2024
2024 Highlights
We hosted 9 events throughout the year, reaching more than 1,500 people, including our second annual convening,BenCon.
We were invited to testify to Congressabout equitable access to unemployment insurance.
We published 7 pieces of research and analysis, focused on digital identity and rules as code, including 1 new project spotlight, 3 new reports, and 3 updated resources.
We announced a new collaborative research project with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) to adapt NIST’s digital identity guidelines to support public benefits programs.
We produced 24 newsletters including 12 editions of the Digital Benefits Digest, 8 editions of Digital Benefits in the News (launched in May 2024), and 4 editions of the UI Technology Modernization Quarterly Roundup.
We relaunched the Digital Benefits Hub as the Digital Government Hub and had over 30,000 combined Hub users. The Hub now has more than 1,300 resources and examples from more than 400 organizations.
We are so grateful for your participation, partnership, and support in 2024. We look forward to our shared work in 2025!
DBN hosted the second annual Digital Benefits Conference, BenCon, 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.
“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
A recap of the two-day conference focused on charting the course to excellence in digital benefits delivery hosted at Georgetown University and online.
The DBN hosted a series of webinars specifically designed to assist state public benefit program leaders who are at the beginning stages of developing customer experience (CX) strategies. The first webinar discussed the White House Executive Order and federal agency guidance for improving customer experience in public benefit programs. The second webinar explored the importance of using CX metrics to guide agency-level decisions and how to gather, analyze, and apply customer feedback to optimize products and services. The series concluded by examining how to address customer experience challenges presented by digital identity in public benefit programs.
This webinar session discusses the importance of using CX metrics to guide agency-level decisions and how to gather, analyze, and apply customer feedback to optimize products and services.
This webinar session discusses how to address customer experience challenges presented by digital identity in public benefit programs.
Communities of Practice
The DBN convenes topic-focused, cross-sector, communities of practice to create community on pressing topics, enable implementation using people-centered practices and shared tools, and inspire what’s possible in benefits delivery. We are in a constant feedback loop in many spaces and across benefits programs, which helps us distill what to focus on and meet diverse needs.
Policy to Code Demo Day and the Digital Identity Workshop at BenCon 2024 and the Unemployment Insurance Technology Coordination Coalition Convening
Rules as Code Community of Practice
The DBN’s Rules as Code Community of Practice (RaC CoP) creates a shared learning and exchange space for people working on public benefits eligibility and enrollment systems — and specifically people tackling the issue of how policy becomes software code. The RaC CoP brings together cross-sector experts who share approaches, examples, and challenges. Participants are from state, local, tribal, territorial, and federal government agencies, nonprofit organizations, academia, and private sector companies. We host recurring roundtable conversations and an email group for asynchronous updates, insights, and assistance. This year we also hosted a prototyping challenge to test how AI can be applied in benefits Rules as Code use cases as requested by the RaC CoP and to inform our ongoing research.
The Rules as Code Community of Practice hosted a roundtable where highlights from the Cross-Sector Insights From the Rules as Code Community of Practice report were shared and MyFriend Ben, PolicyEngine, and Benefits Data Trust shared demos.
In partnership with the Massive Data Institute, DBN hosted the Policy2Code Prototyping Challenge, which invited experiments to test how generative artificial intelligence (AI) technology can be used to translate government policies for U.S. public benefits programs into plain language and software code. Teams and coaches met throughout the summer to share progress and collaborate on challenges. The challenge culminated in Policy2Code Demo Day. Twelve teams presented their experiments, prototypes, and other developments for feedback, awareness, and evaluation.
A highlight of Policy2Code was our very own Georgetown team of students, staff, and faculty at three Tech + Society centers: Beeck, MDI, and CSET. Our incredible students, Jason Goodman, MPP/MBA candidate, Alessandra Garcia Guevara, computer science undergraduate candidate, and Kenny Mohammed, computer science PhD candidate, presented at Demo Day!
In 2024, the DBN worked to establish our new Digital Identity Community of Practice (DI CoP). The DI CoP promotes the delivery of public benefits to all eligible individuals, including vulnerable populations by informing how digital identity approaches should be used in public benefits delivery. We build towards our mission by bringing together stakeholders with varying levels of familiarity with digital identity from across state, local, tribal and territorial government; federal government; direct service providers; advocacy organizations; academia; and industry to foster shared learning, dialogue, and collaboration. In 2024, we ran a survey for interested participants, conducted interviews with 10 key informants, and hosted a feedback session. The first virtual meeting of the full DI CoP will be on January 30, 2025.
After two years of funding and program management support with the DBN and Beeck Center, the UI Tech Coalition moved to its next phase of maturity in October 2024.
Over 26 coalition members came together for their annual in-person convening to spend an entire day closely examining the UI technology developments that have impacted beneficiaries, frontline workers, and civic tech providers across the UI ecosystem at both the federal and state levels.
UI Technology Coordinating Coalition Meetings
Bi-weekly | Virtual
The UI Tech Coordinating Coalition hosts bi-weekly calls for coalition members, with 17 calls in 2024.
New Convening Bodies
Digital Benefits Leadership Council members
In order to meet the ambitious goal of equitable and ethical digital services for benefits delivery, we support coordination across nonprofit/community-based partners and every level of government. In 2024, we established two new convening bodies to support nimble and coordinated responsiveness to emerging questions and challenges arising in the ecosystem.
Digital Benefits Leadership Council
April, July, September, & November 2024 | Virtual & In-Person
The inaugural Digital Benefits Leadership Council provides executive leaders and senior program directors from eight leading non-profit partner organizations across the digital benefits ecosystem a shared space to share strategies, identify challenges, and explore opportunities for collaboration.
Advisory Panel for Excellence in Digital Benefits Delivery (APEX)
April & October 2024 | Virtual
DBN, in partnership with American Public Human Services Association (APHSA), launched the Advisory Panel for Excellence in Digital Benefits Delivery (APEX). APEX aims to engage and empower government and nonprofit practitioners to explore accessible, equitable, and ethical service journeys, and to elevate actionable examples of excellence that can be broadly shared and adopted across the digital benefits ecosystem.
Actionable Tools & Resources
Digital Government Hub
The Digital Government Hub is a dynamic, open-source reference library for anyone using design, data, and technology to improve and enhance government service delivery. The Hub is home to over 1300 resources from over 400 organizations, and had more than 12,000 unique users in the first two months.
The Digital Government Hub officially launched on October 8, 2024 at the APHSA ISM conference. It is curated and maintained by partner non-profit organizations, the Beeck Center for Social Impact + Innovation at Georgetown University and the American Public Human Services Association (APHSA).
The Digital Government Hub combined the Digital Service Network Library and the Digital Benefits Hub, creating a central location for the digital government materials you need. While our benefits content is now in context of a wider digital delivery resource library we’ve kept it easy to find via a special page linked to in the upper right hand corner of the Hub. The DBN and APHSA curate this selection of benefits-focused resources, projects, and implementation tools on the Digital Government Hub. We created this page to make it easy for benefits practitioners to find the resources that are most relevant to their work.
In the spring and summer of 2024, cross-sector practitioners participated in interviews and usability tests to provide direct feedback on the new design.
We consider the Digital Government Hub a living site that will continue to grow and evolve over time.
In December 2024, the Digital Benefits Network released an updated open dataset on authentication and identity proofing requirements across various public benefits applications to highlight best practices and areas for improvement in identity management.
This report highlights key findings from the Rules as Code Community of Practice, including practitioners' challenges with complex policies, their desire to share knowledge and resources, the need for increased training and support, and a collective interest in developing open standards and a shared code library.
This publication shares ten ways states can improve start-to-finish customer experience for unemployment insurance claimants. These approaches can increase overall equitable access and system integrity for UI administration.
In this updated primer, the DBN introduces the concept of digital identity, and provides brief snapshots of digital identity-related developments internationally and in the U.S.
In this updated primer, the DBN describes how identity proofing and authentication show up in public benefits applications and outlines equity and security concerns raised by common identity proofing and authentication methods.
Scenes from the Digital Identity Workshop at BenCon 2024
New Collaborative Research on Digital Identity in Public Benefits Delivery
Announced in June 2024, The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the DBN, and the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) are collaborating on a two-year-long collaborative research and development project to adapt NIST’s digital identity guidelines to better support the implementation of public benefits policy and delivery while balancing security, privacy, equity, and usability. The project is specifically focused on integrated applications that include SNAP and Medicaid. To engage the public, the project team hosted a series of events and workshops in 2024.
Virtual
Digital Identity in Public Benefits Delivery Workshop
August 2024
The project team hosted a virtual kick-off workshop on August 1. Over 100 individuals representing federal and state government, nonprofits, civic tech, and private industry joined the session. During that workshop, the project team invited feedback about which benefits programs the project should focus on, and what types of voluntary resources we should produce.
In-Person
Digital Identity in Public Benefits Delivery Workshop at BenCon
September 2024
On September 18, we hosted a second workshop (slides below) to coincide with the Digital Benefits Network’s annual convening, BenCon. The project team invited additional feedback to inform our work, including discussing what factors drive state government decision-making related to digital identity as well as what research is needed to understand applicant and beneficiary experiences related to digital identity. The team also requested additional feedback to inform project deliverables.
Virtual
Digital Identity Office Hours
November-December 2024
DBN, NIST, and CDT held office hours to give those interested in the project the opportunity to meet with the project team and ask questions.
Center for Public Sector AI in Oklahoma City, Aspen Institute A Conversation on Digital Identity in Financial Services in Washington D.C., Aspen Benefits21 Leadership Forum in Denver, and Identiverse in Las Vegas
On June 4, 2024, Jennifer Phillips, program lead for network collaboration at the DBN testified at the House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Work and Welfare “Unemployment Insurance Reform: Supporting American Workers and Businesses.”
