Service Delivery Area: Benefits
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Building a Stronger Foundation for American Families: Options for Child Tax Credit Reform
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.
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Challenging the Use of Algorithm-driven Decision-making in Benefits Determinations Affecting People with Disabilities
This report analyzes lawsuits that have been filed within the past 10 years arising from the use of algorithm-driven systems to assess people’s eligibility for, or the distribution of, public benefits. It identifies key insights from the various cases into what went wrong and analyzes the legal arguments that plaintiffs have used to challenge those systems in court.
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Assembling Accountability: Algorithmic Impact Assessment for the Public Interest
This report offers a critical framework for designing algorithmic impact assessments (AIAs) by drawing lessons from existing impact assessments in areas like environment, privacy, and human rights to ensure accountability and reduce algorithmic harms.
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Algorithmic Impact Assessments and Accountability: The Co-construction of Impacts
Algorithmic impact assessments (AIAs) are an emergent form of accountability for organizations that build and deploy automated decision-support systems. This academic paper explores how to co-construct impacts that closely reflects harms, and emphasizes the need for input of various types of expertise and affected communities.
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Access for All: Innovation for Equitable SNAP Delivery
New technologies and policy changes can modernize SNAP benefit delivery to ensure equitable and inclusive access.
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Researching Inequities in a Public Benefits Program with a Racial Equity Framework, 7 Takeaways
This article examines how applying a Racial Equity Framework reveals systemic inequities in the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) program, offering insights into barriers faced by marginalized communities and potential solutions.
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Scaling Out Government Assistance
This session from FormFest 2024 focused on how to help people get the assistance they need from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ work on the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) and the Maryland Social Services Administration’s work to improve welfare support for kinship caregivers.
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Pandemic EBT Policy + Delivery Memo
Policy memo by Code for America regarding how to deliver P-EBT benefits during the COVID-19 crisis.
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Lost in the Labyrinth: Helping Parents Navigate Early Care and Education Programs
The Lost in the Labyrinth brief examines how fragmented early care and education (ECE) programs across the U.S. create challenges for families seeking services for young children.
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How the Next Administration Can Use Technology To Prevent Another Unemployment Insurance Meltdown
Clearing applicant backlogs is an important solution to the UI crisis. State governments and federal agencies could facilitate access to public benefits by collaborating to develop interoperable technology platforms that use open source software and modular design. Panelists discuss opportunities to prevent future UI crises by reimagining how governments deliver benefits to their citizens.
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Engaging People with Lived Experience to Improve Federal Research, Policy, and Practice
This webpage links to materials ASPE has prepared as it leads work on how federal agencies and programs can meaningfully and effectively engage people with lived experience.
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Emerging Legal and Policy Trends in State and Federal AI Governance at BenCon 2024
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.