The article outlines NYC Opportunity's "Designed by Community" program, which funds and empowers local leaders to create solutions for challenges in marginalized communities. Initially focused on government projects, the program pivoted during the pandemic to support community-led initiatives, with projects ranging from mentorship programs to tech tools for public housing residents.
In this blog post, we’ve detailed some of the steps we take to help capture the best data possible when conducting interviews. This post is intended as a guide for people who need to conduct user interviews and for people simply curious about how we work.
This resource introduces the "Layer Cake" approach, a framework for driving behavior change in government systems and public services by addressing all layers of service delivery, from frontline staff to policymakers, with an emphasis on human-centered design and civic participation.
In the Fall of 2022, the USDOL Office of Unemployment Insurance Modernization (OUIM) consulted with the Illinois Department of Employment Security (IDES) to provide hands-on support with IT modernization and customer experience strategy. Primary discussions focused on making informed product, service, and business decisions based on qualitative and quantitative data— how might IDES leverage existing data streams to identify the most pressing technology issues in their unemployment insurance system, and how might IDES act upon this information in a timely and impactful manner?
This report describes how the government can use widespread social media feedback and begin to build long-term measures to center people’s experience as an important component of policy design
Professor Don Moynihan discusses how administrative burden is an effective tool to make it difficult for people to access certain types of benefits, noting that this is particularly harmful to communities of color.
Code for America helped expand GetCalFresh (a service that guides Californians through the SNAP application process and helps government deliver food assistance to people in need) from a small pilot into a statewide service. They also recently concluded a similar pilot in Michigan along with Civilla and the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services.
This field guide is for digital services and technology leaders working at the federal, state, or local government level. It describes a way of applying research approaches to strategic decision making across digital services.
