The Decide Methods help you derive insights from the information gathered during the Discovery phase. You’ll validate initial assumptions, develop a deeper understanding of workflows and processes, and develop design hypotheses.
Government solicitations to procure custom software are often long, complicated, and take months. By using 18F’s agile contract format, agencies can hire an agile software contractor with a quickly-written dozen-page solicitation, allowing for immense savings in time and money.
Biometric identification technologies—such as facial recognition and fingerprinting—can affect underserved communities, including low-income and minority communities. GAO interviewed academics, advocacy groups, and technology experts to find out how.
This paper introduces a method for auditing benefits eligibility screening tools in four steps: 1) generate test households, 2) automatically populate screening questions with household information and retrieve determinations, 3) translate eligibility guidelines into computer code to generate ground truth determinations, and 4) identify conflicting determinations to detect errors.
The experience of the COVID-19 pandemic and its induced recession underscored the crucial importance of unemployment insurance (UI) to workers, and to the stability of the American economy. Temporary federal expansions of unemployment systems during the pandemic showed how they can quickly be scaled to increase benefit levels and to include categories of workers who were not previously eligible, such as the self-employed, caregivers, and low-wage workers. And, states showed that separate programs can be set up to provide similar benefits to workers who are explicitly excluded from unemployment insurance—in particular immigrants who do not have a documented immigration status.
This guide consolidates learning and spotlights principles, insights, and emerging practices to guide municipal leaders and public-private partnerships interested in designing basic income programs that are ethical, equitable, rigorous, informative, and consequential for local, state and national policymaking.
This reporting explores how algorithms used to screen prospective tenants, including those waiting for public housing, can block renters from housing based on faulty information.
This policy brief outlines how improved data sharing between federal agencies, state and local governments, and institutions can leverage existing data from other benefits programs to streamline eligibility processes and benefits uptake for the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP) and other programs.
This landscape analysis examines data, design, technology, and innovation-enabled approaches that make it easier for eligible people to enroll in, and receive, federally-funded social safety net benefits, with a focus on the earliest adaptations during the COVID-19 pandemic.
