The Digital Benefit Network's Digital Identity Community of Practice held a session to hear considerations from civil rights technologists and human-centered design practitioners on ways to ensure program security while simultaneously promoting equity, enabling accessibility, and minimizing bias.
In this updated primer, the DBN describes how identity proofing and authentication show up in public benefits applications and outlines equity and security concerns raised by common identity proofing and authentication methods.
BenCon 2024 explored state and federal AI governance, highlighting the rapid increase in AI-related legislation and executive orders. Panelists emphasized the importance of experimentation, learning, and collaboration between government levels, teams, agencies, and external partners.
Michigan's UIA director, Julia Dale, is leading the agency through transition by prioritizing lived experience, hope, grit, and values. Virginia's SNAP Program Manager, Michele Thomas, highlighted the success of Sun Bucks, a summer EBT child nutrition program that fed over 700,000 kids in its first year.
This toolkit offers strategies and tools to help agencies build the culture and infrastructure needed to apply data analysis routinely, effectively, and accurately – referred to in this publication as “sustainable data use.”
The exclusion of agricultural and domestic workers—predominantly African Americans—from the 1935 Social Security Act's unemployment insurance program is analyzed as a result of international policy diffusion rather than solely domestic racial politics.
This presentation from Steph White, Cross Enrollment Coordinator at the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services offers an in-depth example on implementing cross enrollment with WIC and general tools for cross enrollment.
This analysis explores the dual nature of mobile state IDs, highlighting their potential to enhance digital identity verification while raising significant privacy and equity concerns.
Code for America partnered with the CBPP, Civilla, and Nava to launch the Integrated Benefits Initiative, testing and piloting human-centered approaches to improve outcomes and learn what an optimal safety net could look like. This article describes key takeaways from short-term pilots implemented as part of this project.
