What Works Cities helps local governments improve residents’ lives by using data and evidence effectively to tackle pressing challenges. The Certification Assessment helps cities benchmark their progress and develop a roadmap for improvement.
Michigan's UIA director, Julia Dale, is leading the agency through transition by prioritizing lived experience, hope, grit, and values. Virginia's SNAP Program Manager, Michele Thomas, highlighted the success of Sun Bucks, a summer EBT child nutrition program that fed over 700,000 kids in its first year.
Hennepin County, Minnesota, implemented an online application system for child care assistance, resulting in increased applications, faster benefit distribution, and reduced administrative burdens.
This article offers three human‑centered strategies to help state agencies implement expanded work reporting requirements in SNAP and Medicaid under H.R. 1 with minimal burden on clients and staff.
This toolkit provides guidance to protect participant confidentiality in human services research and evaluation, including legal frameworks, risk assessment strategies, and best practices.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)
The report beings by briefly describing the challenge that disabled workers face in accessing UI and the benefits of reforming the system to better serve these workers. The report then presents a list of considerations for UI reform in the areas of administrative process and technology improvements as well as considerations for policy change.
The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) Data Collaborative Pilot Initiative is a component of the TANF Data Innovation project. The 30-month pilot offered technical assistance and training to support cross-disciplinary teams of staff at eight state and county TANF programs in the routine use of TANF and other administrative data to inform policy and practice.
Policymakers, program administrators, federal leaders, researchers, and advocates are increasingly focused on using administrative data to build evidence for improving government programs. Achieving this goal requires accessible data sources and the capacity to use them, yet stakeholders have little information about the baseline level of state capacity in these areas. How does one measure concepts such as “effective data use” and “analytic capacity?” This brief reports findings from a pioneering and comprehensive needs assessment that examined the capacity of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) programs in 54 U.S. states and territories to analyze data used for program improvement, monitoring, and evidence-building. The needs assessment provides a foundation for technical assistance and continued improvement for the TANF program and may also provide valuable insights and frameworks for other state-administered human services programs.
This article examines how the decentralization of safety net programs after welfare reform has led to growing inequality in benefit generosity and access across U.S. states.
This report explores policy options Utah and other states can adopt to mitigate benefit cliffs, which occur when small income increases lead to sudden loss of public assistance.
The article examines the participation of adults aged 50 and older in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in 2022, highlighting the program's role in reducing food insecurity and poverty among older adults, especially those with disabilities.
