Topic: Policy
-
C-STAT: Achieving Results for Colorado – Summary Report
This report describes C-Stat 2.0, an updated version of the the Colorado Department of Human Services’ performance-based analysis strategy that allows them to better focus on and improve performance outcomes that enhance people’s lives.
-
Aligning Systems to Advance Family and Community Well-Being: A Partnership Playbook for Community Action and Human Services Agencies
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.
-
Using Asset Verification Systems to Streamline Medicaid Determinations
This report examines how implementing Asset Verification Systems (AVS) can streamline Medicaid eligibility determinations for seniors and individuals with disabilities by automating the verification of applicants' financial assets.
-
Building the Tech-Enabled Safety Net: Public Benefits and Innovation Amid COVID-19
This report outlines a dozen fintech and civic tech organizations working across fourteen safety net programs to show what’s possible when modern technology is married to a consumer insights perspective.
-
On the Myths of Waste, Fraud, and Abuse
Though the rhetoric of “waste, fraud, and abuse” is ubiquitous when it comes to welfare programs, low-income households receive little relief from benefits programs. Most efforts to make public benefits systems more “efficient” actually just waste time and money in practice. They instead serve to stigmatize low-income families and chip away at the little assistance that remains available to them.
-
Newborn Supply Kits Reduce Maternal Stress and Improve Trust in Government
The report evaluates the 2023 Newborn Supply Kit pilot program, highlighting its effectiveness in reducing maternal stress, alleviating financial burdens, and increasing trust in government services among new parents, especially in low-income communities.
-
Building Resilience Action Area 1: Adequately Funding UI Administration
This report outlines the U.S. Department of Labor’s comprehensive action plan to strengthen the unemployment insurance (UI) system by addressing chronic underfunding and proposing legislative reforms to support long-term modernization and resilience.
-
Building Resilience Action Area 3: Building resilient and responsive state IT systems
This section of the Building Resilience plan outlines strategies to help states modernize outdated unemployment insurance (UI) IT systems, making them more modular, secure, fraud-resistant, and user-centered.
-
Digital Benefits Network: 2024 Year in Review
Recap the work and achievements of the Digital Benefits Network in 2024.
-
Reducing Administrative Burdens: The U.S. Federal Government Framework
This brief outlines the U.S. federal government’s framework to identify, reduce, and address administrative burdens through a series of executive orders, legislative actions, and updated policies focused on improving customer experience and increasing access to government benefits.
-
An Examination of Medicaid Renewal Outcomes and Enrollment Changes at the End of the Unwinding
There were over 25 million Medicaid disenrollments in 2023, but national enrollment remained significantly above pre-pandemic levels at over 56 million, with notable state-level variations and near-recovery of child enrollment.
-
Working with the Data You Already Have to Improve Benefits Delivery
This article demonstrates how states can improve public benefits delivery by leveraging existing data systems, even with limited data maturity.