This brief describes TDI’s efforts to transform federal TANF and employment data into an integrated resource for program management and evidence building. This challenging project required the resolution of multiple technical, legal, and data security issues. Lessons learned may be useful for audiences interested in unlocking the potential of administrative data, including members of federal and state agencies, researchers, and advocates of evidence-informed policymaking.
Our existing maze of family tax benefits — including the CTC, Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit (CDCTC), and head of household (HoH) filing status — has several structural deficiencies that make overhauling the system a prerequisite for any effort to boost support for families with children. The report offers several options for expanding and streamlining family tax benefits to address these issues.
This brief highlights key takeaways from APHSA’s work on young families, starting with an overview of the young families work and its early years, followed by key takeaways and highlights from its final year, ending with opportunities for future work in the young families space.
American Public Human Services Association (APHSA)
This issue brief illustrates the challenges that many older adults with low income face in gaining access to benefits online. It addresses digital literacy, access to broadband internet, and the increasing prevalence of connecting online to SNAP.
Safeguarding privacy and addressing algorithmic bias can pose an under-recognized trade-off. This brief documents tradeoffs by examining the U.S. government’s recent efforts to introduce government-wide equity assessments of federal programs. The authors propose a range of policy solutions that would enable agencies to navigate the privacy-bias trade-off.
In this policy brief and video, Michele Gilman summarizes evidence-based recommendations for better structuring public participation processes for AI, and underscores the urgency of enacting them.
This memo provides state agencies with guidance on allowable use of advanced automation technologies. FNS encourages and supports state agencies’ use of advanced automation technologies to enhance the administration of SNAP and foster public trust, both in SNAP and in the state agencies’ systems, within the framework of statutory and regulatory requirements.
This policy brief offers recommendations to policymakers relating to the computational and human sides of facial recognition technologies based on a May 2020 workshop with leading computer scientists, legal scholars, and representatives from industry, government, and civil society
Overview: Families with the youngest children stand to gain the most from improved access to benefits, yet persistent fragmentation in early care and education (ECE) programs creates challenges in finding, applying for, and enrolling in services. As a result, families miss out on critical opportunities for their children at the time when these ECE programs have the highest impact. The New Practice Lab examined what these missed opportunities look like up close in one state and collected data on the fractured system of programs and funding streams across all fifty states to begin illustrating the complexity that families face. Ultimately, we see wide variation across states with plenty of opportunities to increase access to information, simplify application procedures, and create more equitable access to these services.
Policymakers, program administrators, federal leaders, researchers, and advocates are increasingly focused on using administrative data to build evidence for improving government programs. Achieving this goal requires accessible data sources and the capacity to use them, yet stakeholders have little information about the baseline level of state capacity in these areas. How does one measure concepts such as “effective data use” and “analytic capacity?” This brief reports findings from a pioneering and comprehensive needs assessment that examined the capacity of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) programs in 54 U.S. states and territories to analyze data used for program improvement, monitoring, and evidence-building. The needs assessment provides a foundation for technical assistance and continued improvement for the TANF program and may also provide valuable insights and frameworks for other state-administered human services programs.
