The team introduced "Policy Pulse," a tool to help policy analysts understand laws and regulations better by comparing current policies with their original goals to identify implementation issues.
This presentation explores the balance between security and user experience in digital benefit account creation and authentication, highlighting insights from a forthcoming playbook focused on SNAP and Medicaid portals.
This guide is intended to provide everything else, with a focus on the basics of UI technology projects, guidance on standards for equitable uses of technology, and strategies for how to have a positive impact on these projects.
In this piece, the Digital Benefits Network shares several sources—from journalistic pieces, to reports and academic articles—we’ve found useful and interesting in our reading on automation and artificial intelligence.
This guidebook offers an introduction to the risks of discrimination when using automated decision-making systems. This report also includes helpful definitions related to automation.
This report outlines key lessons and recommendations from Code for America's collaboration with the Voluntary Income Tax Assistance program, which served over 800,000 clients via GetYourRefund.org.
This report investigates how D.C. government agencies use automated decision-making (ADM) systems and highlights their risks to privacy, fairness, and accountability in public services.
This playbook outlines the ways Community Action and human services agencies worked together to meet the pandemic challenge—what worked well, obstacles and difficulties, and lessons learned to inform the path forward, partnering to achieve a more equitable recovery. It also explains how communities have leveraged opportunities to partner on approaches that hold the promise of deeper, longer lasting changes for families—work shaped by families’ wishes and strengths and designed to advance both family-level and systems-level change.
American Public Human Services Association (APHSA)
The Playbook’s purpose is to guide researchers while supporting and lending authority to community organizations as they advocate for partnerships that will benefit their constituencies. The Playbook aims to provide some answers to such questions as: How can technologists and scientists engage communities in a spirit of partnership, without such extractive practices? How can community organizations work with researchers in ways that benefit their communities and expand their capacity, rather than burdening their staff?
Government agencies at all levels collect administrative data in the course of their day-to-day operations. While such information has been used to determine effectiveness through program evaluations for many years, program administrators view it increasingly as a valuable resource that can also be used to improve program performance. For example, administrative data from employment and public benefits programs such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) can offer insights into families’ unmet needs and ways to improve services.
This article discusses Code for America’s research into the user experience of applying or Medicaid, SNAP, TANF, WIC, and LIHEAP in the United States. They found that user experience applying for benefits programs varies greatly by (and often within) each state.
Research from the Department of Labor shows that document management systems reduce barriers for claimants and help states be more efficient. With additional improvements and investment, these systems can be even more effective in serving the public and reducing backlogs in times of crisis.