Resource Format: Article: Academic
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Fewer Burdens but Greater Inequality? Reevaluating the Safety Net through the Lens of Administrative Burden
This article examines how administrative burdens in U.S. social safety net programs have changed over the past 30 years, showing that while average burdens have declined, inequality in who faces these burdens has grown.
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Who Audits the Auditors? Recommendations from a Field Scan of the Algorithmic Auditing Ecosystem
Through a field scan, this paper identifies emerging best practices as well as methods and tools that are becoming commonplace, and enumerates common barriers to leveraging algorithmic audits as effective accountability mechanisms.
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Simplified, mobile-friendly SNAP application increases application rates
This research summary presents findings from a randomized controlled trial demonstrating how mRelief’s simplified SNAP application significantly increases application rates among eligible individuals.
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A large-scale study of performance and equity of commercial remote identity verification technologies across demographics
This study assesses five commercial RIdV solutions for equity across demographic groups and finds that two are equitable, while two have inequitable performance for certain demographics.
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The Privacy-Bias Tradeoff: Data Minimization and Racial Disparity Assessments in U.S. Government
This academic paper examines how federal privacy laws restrict data collection needed for assessing racial disparities, creating a tradeoff between protecting individual privacy and enabling algorithmic fairness in government programs.
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Program Recertification Costs: Evidence from SNAP
This article analyzes the impact of interview assignment timing on the success of recertification and continued participation in SNAP.
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“It’s Like Night and Day”: How Bureaucratic Encounters Vary across WIC, SNAP, and Medicaid
This study examines how bureaucratic interactions differ among public assistance programs—WIC, SNAP, and Medicaid—highlighting variations in participant experiences and the psychological costs associated with each.
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Better Together? An Evaluation of AI-Supported Code Translation
This research explores how software engineers are able to work with generative machine learning models. The results explore the benefits of generative code models and the challenges software engineers face when working with their outputs. The authors also argue for the need for intelligent user interfaces that help software engineers effectively work with generative code models.
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Algorithmic Impact Assessments and Accountability: The Co-construction of Impacts
Algorithmic impact assessments (AIAs) are an emergent form of accountability for organizations that build and deploy automated decision-support systems. This academic paper explores how to co-construct impacts that closely reflects harms, and emphasizes the need for input of various types of expertise and affected communities.
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Digital Identity 101: An Introduction to Digital Identity in Public Benefits Programs (Draft)
This introductory guide explains the core concepts of digital identity and how they apply to public benefits programs. This guide is the first part of a suite of voluntary resources from the BalanceID Project: Enabling Secure Access and Managing Risk in SNAP and Medicaid.
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Expectations vs. reality: Retention challenges and strategies for U.S. state and local government digital services teams
This paper examines the challenges U.S. state and local digital service teams face in retaining talent and offers strategies to improve retention and team stability.
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Against Predictive Optimization: On the Legitimacy of Decision-Making Algorithms that Optimize Predictive Accuracy
This academic paper examines predictive optimization, a category of decision-making algorithms that use machine learning (ML) to predict future outcomes of interest about individuals. Through this examination, the authors explore how predictive optimization can raise concerns that make its use illegitimate and challenge claims about predictive optimization's accuracy, efficiency, and fairness.