In this video, Susan S. Gibson, chair of the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee's (PRAC) Identity Fraud and Redress Working Group, speaks with Jeremy Grant of the Better Identity Coalition, about the challenges of identity fraud for benefits program during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Based on state agency survey responses, this report summarizes key findings from the first calendar year of pandemic response and provides policy considerations for the future of SNAP.
American Public Human Services Association (APHSA)
Eligible people struggle to maintain their case status for critical safety net services, often due to administrative hurdles and poor communication. Code for America piloted text message reminders to support Louisianans, which helped clients avoid costly churn. Text messages are an underrated, efficient solution for human service agencies to meet client expectations and improve case outcomes.
This research brief summarizes the ideas and recommendations from sessions with dozens of cross-sector stakeholders within the technology ecosystem to identify conditions for better, healthier, more secure digital ecosystems that could help guide the next generation of open protocols and platforms.
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.
The Benefits Enrollment Field Guide looks at the landscape of America’s safety net benefits experience in 2023 and tracks the differences from our 2019 assessment based on expanded evaluation criteria. It also highlights successful paths to equitable, human-centered experiences. It examines online enrollment for Modified Adjusted Gross Income (MAGI) Medicaid, SNAP, TANF, the Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP), and WIC.
The FileYourStateTaxes pilot successfully integrated state tax filing with the IRS Direct File program, improving taxpayer experience and ease of filing.
Building on our February 2022 report Benefit Eligibility Rules as Code: Reducing the Gap Between Policy and Service Delivery for the Safety Net, the Beeck Center’s Digital Benefits Network (DBN) recently held a convening to share progress and potential in digitizing benefits eligibility and to begin addressing how a national approach could be started.
This academic paper examines predictive optimization, a category of decision-making algorithms that use machine learning (ML) to predict future outcomes of interest about individuals. Through this examination, the authors explore how predictive optimization can raise concerns that make its use illegitimate and challenge claims about predictive optimization's accuracy, efficiency, and fairness.
18F describes modular contracting, the process of breaking up large, custom software procurements into a small constellation of smaller contracts. Modular procurement requires agile, product thinking, user-centered design, DevSecOps, and loosely-coupled architecture.
This Blueprint is a whole-of-government effort that aims to provide a resource to assist federal decisionmakers in leveraging social and behavioral science to improve policy and program design and delivery.
