The US Digital response partnered with dozens of states, counties, and cities to support them in using and tracking CARES Act grants. This article presents six lessons learned from their work to help governments better assist residents, particularly small businesses and low-income communities.
Code for America initially introduced the concept of Delivery-Driven Government in 2018. This article refreshes its original principles and expands on what the organization has learned to make its concepts clearer.
County workers typically spend most of their time trying to get income information right during eligibility interviews. This article provides several recommendations for asking about income, accounting for cognitive biases, under-reporting, and complexities in reporting income.
Human-centered design is a problem-solving method that puts people at the center of the problem and aims to design solutions that address the needs of the people. Embracing such design methods in government is imperative to finding solutions that work for the people.
The US General Services Administration announces that it is seeking a limited number of state and local government partners to take advantage of login.gov to administer their federally funded programs.
Less than 10% of applications for VA health care are submitted digitally. This article describes how the U.S. Digital Service partnered with the Health Eligibility Center to change that, making it possible for anyone with an internet connection to apply anytime, anywhere, from any device.
This article discusses the various benefits of publicly-funded open-source software. These benefits include fairness and transparency, economic stimulus, and support of the Federal Source Code Policy Agenda.
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.
Overwhelming unemployment rates during the pandemic created significant demand for state-based unemployment benefits. As a result of the increased applications, states are also experiencing an overwhelming volume of calls to their call centers. U.S. Digital Response has been working with states to mitigate problems arising from heavy demand on call centers. This article describes tangible steps state governments can take to manage call volume.
The Administration for Children and Families’ Office of Family Assistance (OFA) worked with 18F to replace its legacy data reporting system through product management training, user research, and an assisted acquisition.
Better Rules utilizes multidisciplinary teams that include people skilled in policy, legal, business rules, programming, and service design working together in an iterative fashion to develop rules. Several outputs are produced using this approach, each offering an opportunity that can be fed back into that iterative process and re-used to solve other issues.
Important considerations for understanding user needs to inform responsive design in rapidly changing contexts are discussed, including how context, threat perception, decision-making, and crisis affects disaster management and UX research.
