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?
mRelief recently completed a research study to investigate whether there are specific parts of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP; also known as food stamps) benefits application process that make it difficult to complete. We conducted interviews with mRelief users and SNAP outreach workers (individuals whose job responsibilities include providing SNAP application assistance in person or over the phone) in Illinois. We also conducted group interviews with SNAP outreach workers to collaborate with them to uncover findings and develop recommendations.
This is a community-based project focused on creating and maintaining a resource for researchers and research operations specialists that will empower people to find out not only what tools are being used, but also in which industry, by what size of teams, and where in the world.
The Assessing Your WIC Certification Practices guide by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP) provides state and local WIC agencies with a framework to evaluate and improve their certification and enrollment processes to enhance access and participation.
The Unemployment Insurance Equitable Access Toolkit contains common equity recommendations, promising practices, and insights, represented visually as a different floor of an agency office building, compiled in one interactive document.
The Better Government Lab at the McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University has developed a new scale for measuring the experience of burden when accessing public benefits. They offer both a three-item scale and a single-item scale, which can be utilized for any public benefit program. The shorter scales provide a less burdensome way to measure by requiring less information from users.
A catalogue to help teams design trustworthy services that work for people. Categories including informing decisions, signing into services, giving and removing consent, and doing security checks.
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 book is an in-depth exploration of federal programs and controversial legislation demonstrating that administrative burden has long existed in policy design, preventing citizens from accessing fundamental rights. Further discussion of how policymakers can minimize administrative burden to reduce inequality, boost civic engagement, and build an efficient state.
Code for America explores the systems at play and the individuals experience of participants in WIC. By investigating overall quantitative trends in coverage, redemption, and retention rates, they use the data as a guide to build out a qualitative research plan that explains why such trends are occurring.
