An event recap from one of FormFest 2024's breakout sessions featuring speakers from Digital Service Teams across the United States and the Department of Veteran Affairs.
Building on our February 2022 report Benefit Eligibility Rules as Code: Reducing the Gap Between Policy and Service Delivery for the Safety Net, the Beeck Center’s Digital Benefits Network (DBN) recently held a convening to share progress and potential in digitizing benefits eligibility and to begin addressing how a national approach could be started.
This FormFest profile highlights Riverside County’s pilot of AI-powered interviews that streamline benefit applications, reducing bureaucratic burden on families in crisis while freeing caseworkers to focus on human connection.
This article details the collaboration between Miami-Dade County, community partners, and technologists to enhance climate resilience by allowing residents to report and access information on extreme heat conditions affecting their commutes.
It is frequently assumed that when rules are implemented as code, a rules engine is necessary. However, it is possible for policy people and engineers to effectively work together to code logic that drives technological system without needing a mediating rules engine at all.
This article describes how Code for America conducted qualitative research within its GetCalFresh application by asking families to tell them about their familial, housing, and financial situations. From client messages, they gathered information regarding how to make changes to their product to keep their work people-centered.
In response to exploding demand for social services during COVID-19, the Louisiana Department of children and Family services implemented text-message alerts and reminders for the state’s entire SNAP caseload, launched a text-based public campaign to help people understand and apply for SNAP benefits, and hired SNAP recipients to provide client feedback on communications and policy decisions.
This post argues that for the types of large-scale, organized fraud attacks that many state benefits systems saw during the pandemic, solutions grounded in cybersecurity methods may be far more effective than creating or adopting automated systems.
