Resource Format: Report
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Policy 
2022 Benefits Scorecard
Framework by the Aspen Institute to assess how both public and private benefits are performing to support workers’ financial security needs, identify where innovations are needed to fill current benefit gaps, and explore opportunities to improve and modernize design and delivery. This resource allows policymakers, employers, benefits providers, and researchers assess benefits performance for constituents and identify opportunities in market and policy innovation to ensure equitable benefits distribution.
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The Cash Assistance Implementation Playbook
The purpose of this document is to outline possible technical approaches to supporting a cash assistance program. The report aims to both capture individual approaches as well as overarching insights taken from across the approaches taken by different organizations.
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Policy 
The IRS as a Benefits Administrator
The IRS is arguably the single most critical benefits administrator in the country, given its responsibility for tax credit-based relief programs, and COVID-19 relief payments. Despite these programs’ incredible progress in reducing poverty, and despite great strides by the IRS to implement them successfully, accessing IRS benefits remains too difficult for many low-income families. This report presents a comprehensive agenda to increase benefit coverage rates, simplify Americans’ interactions with the IRS, and decrease the portion of IRS benefits diverted to third parties.
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Policy 
Establishing Emergency Cash Assistance Programs
A guide by New America to help cities and states set up cash assistance programs for their residents, based on the Alia Cares platform that the National Domestic Workers Alliance built to run their Coronavirus Cares Fund that provides emergency assistance for home care workers to support them in staying safe and at home to slow the spread of COVID.
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BenePhilly SNAP Demonstration Project
The BenePhilly SNAP Demonstration Project (henceforth “BenePhilly”) represents an innovative and successful approach to streamlining access to public benefits. It sought to increase participation in SNAP among eligible senior households in Philadelphia by utilizing existing state and federal data to reach seniors who are likely eligible for, but not participating in, SNAP, as well as simplify the SNAP application and enrollment process. This report summarizes preliminary findings from BenePhilly’s 18 months of operation (June 2010–December 2011).
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Improving Public Programs for Low-Income Tax Filers
To inform future efforts to bring more low-income tax filers into the tax system, this report focuses on the Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) program and investigates the challenges and opportunities to better serve the American people and improve the experience of tax filing.
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Policy 
“It has meant everything”: How P-EBT Helped Families in Michigan
This report explores Michigan’s implementation of the Pandemic Electronic Benefit Transfer (P-EBT) program. Drawing on interviews from individuals within the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services and input from SNAP participants via surveys distributed using the Fresh EBT app, this report provides insights into the strategies that enabled Michigan to roll out an entirely new program quickly and effectively.
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Recommendations to Set Path for Reform at the Employment Development Department
To better serve workers who have experienced job loss during the COVID-19 pandemic, Governor Gavin Newsom announced a strike team charged with creating a blueprint for improvements at the Employment Development Department (EDD). In this report, the Strike Team outlines its recommendations and suggested next steps for the EDD to address the backlog and improve on future processing of unemployment claims.
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Human-Centered Design 
LIFT Voices Describe Hardships Among Black and Latina Mothers in Pandemic
Black and Latina mothers have faced intensified material hardship during the pandemic due to institutional racism and sexism. LIFT describes the lessons it learned through working with parents to improve their personal well-being, increase their social connections, and strengthen them financially through coaching and direct financial assistance.
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Social Listening: Covid-19, Social Media, and The Path to a Better Safety Net
The Aspen Financial Security Program identified five reoccurring trends of social media platform usage by people in relation to safety net programs and four techniques for capturing people’s experiences in order to reform the safety net. This report describes how the government can use widespread social media feedback and begin to build long-term measures to center people’s experience as an important component of policy design
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Human-Centered Design 
Improving Customer Service in Health and Human Services Through Technology
This paper outlines common challenges agencies face while administering benefits and gives examples of how technology can streamline the process. It also discusses the importance of user-centered design, and the necessity of utilizing technology as part of a holistic strategy to implement public benefits.
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Human-Centered Design 
Report: Modernizing Access to the Safety Net
Innovators inside and outside of government are working to improve access to the social safety net using data, technology, and design. This report highlights innovations carried out by The Rockefeller Foundation’s Data and Technology grantees from 2018 to 2021, including extraordinary efforts to meet the challenges of the pandemic. Those grantees are: Benefits Data Trust, Code for America, Georgetown University’s Beeck Center for Social Impact and Innovation, U.S. Digital Response, and the Digital Innovation and Governance Initiative at New America. In 2020, these projects secured more than $200 million in benefits for close to 100,000 people across at least 36 states, and helped millions more through policy change, training, and guidance.