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Code for America

Code for America believes government at all levels can and should work well for all people.

The organization works shoulder to shoulder with community organizations and government to build digital tools and services, change policies, and improve programs. Code for America uses insights and ideas from real people to identify real solutions that break down barriers to meet community needs and improve government in meaningful ways.

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LA’MESSAGE Demo and Scripts

LA’MESSAGE Demo and Scripts

LA’MESSAGE is a one-way text messaging service developed by Code for America in partnership with Louisiana to broadcast reminders and guidance to residents enrolled in and eligible for SNAP, Medicaid, TANF, and WIC at key points throughout the benefits enrollment and renewal process.

Code for America
Artifact
Claim Your Child Tax Credit

Claim Your Child Tax Credit

Code for America’s simplified tax filing tool that allows users to claim their Child Tax Credit and any missing amount of their third stimulus payment.

Code for America
Artifact
GetYourRefund.Org: Free tax filing, made simple

GetYourRefund.Org: Free tax filing, made simple

GetYourRefund.org is an online portal by Code for America that helps low-income individuals claim thousands of dollars in tax credits, even after the traditional tax deadline has passed.

Code for America
Artifact
MNbenefits Demo Site

MNbenefits Demo Site

Demo website for MNbenefits, Minnesota's benefits application that allows applicants to finish an application in 20 minutes or less.

State of Minnesota, Code for America
Artifact
GetCalFresh Demo Website

GetCalFresh Demo Website

Demo website for GetCalFresh—Code for America and the state of California’s efforts to simplify the SNAP application process.

Code for America
Artifact
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Blueprint for a Human-Centered Safety Net

Blueprint for a Human-Centered Safety Net

Describes the Principles of a Human-Centered Safety Net: Many Welcoming Doors, Easy to Understand, Clients Can Make Informed Decisions, Responsive to Changing Needs, Simple Actions

Code for America
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Bringing Social Safety Net Benefits Online: Examining online platforms for all 50 states

Bringing Social Safety Net Benefits Online: Examining online platforms for all 50 states

This visualized report is a first first-of-its-kind view of the state of benefits applications across the nation from a client perspective, including information on application availability online, combined benefit applications, application completion times, as well as login and identity proofing requirements.

Code for America
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Cell Phones as a Safety Net Lifeline

Cell Phones as a Safety Net Lifeline

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.

Code for America
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Code for America and GetYourRefund.org Non-filer Learnings and Recommendations

Code for America and GetYourRefund.org Non-filer Learnings and Recommendations

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.

Code for America
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Conducting Research with a Healing Mindset

Conducting Research with a Healing Mindset

Code for America highlights the importance of recognizing the effects of intergenerational trauma on communities that have been systemically marginalized when conducting research.

Code for America
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COVID-19’s Impact on the Social Safety Net

COVID-19’s Impact on the Social Safety Net

California’s SNAP program faced record application volume due to the COVID-19 crisis, and other states must anticipate similar demand. This post summarizes key takeaways from GetCalFresh’s real-time data and client communications, and offers recommendations for how other states can implement effective responses.

Code for America
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Delivery-Driven Government: Principles and Practices for Government in the Digital Age

Delivery-Driven Government: Principles and Practices for Government in the Digital Age

Technology enables governments to engage in “pilot” projects to see where they are headed and course-correct along the way, as opposed to evaluating the results over the course of multiple years. Delivery-driven government utilizes technology and “pilot” projects to see institutions and processes through the eyes of users, allowing for more effective service delivery.

Code for America
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Delivery-Driven Policy: Policy designed for the digital age

Delivery-Driven Policy: Policy designed for the digital age

There is a key disconnect between policymakers’ intent and implementation of policies. A user-centric, iterative, and data-driven approach can result result in digital technology that provides much needed data and insights at a substantially lower cost.

Code for America
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Designing Inclusive Digital Services in San Jose

Designing Inclusive Digital Services in San Jose

Applying UX research methods, the City of San Jose worked to improve how low-income and non-English speaking residents engaged with My San Jose, a website and mobile app for residents to report neighborhood issues to cities. They used a Spanish and Vietnamese translator to conduct interviews with target users, then detailed major findings and corresponding recommendations in this report.

Code for America
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Dismantling the Invisible Wall: Breaking down barriers to pandemic relief

Dismantling the Invisible Wall: Breaking down barriers to pandemic relief

The CARES Act and Families First Coronavirus Response Act failed to reach millions of non-tax-filing Americans with low incomes and deliberately excluded undocumented immigrants, leaving entire communities without recourse. Disaster Relief Assistance for Immigrants (DRAI) was a crucial program by the state of California for undocumented immigrants, and the California Department of Social Services partnered with Code for America to build a digital portal that would support community-based organizations in taking applications, tracking the various steps in the process, and activating clients’ $500 bank cards.

Code for America
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Encouraging Uptake of Benefits with Psychological Ownership Messaging

Encouraging Uptake of Benefits with Psychological Ownership Messaging

A brief report on our quantitative research about messages that increase people's take-up of government benefits by making them feel like those benefits belong to them.

Code for America
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Filing Taxes for Economic Justice

Filing Taxes for Economic Justice

At the onset of the COVID-19 crisis, CodeforAmerica rapidly scaled up GetYourRefund, allowing filers to quickly and simply file their taxes in order to get refunds they were eligible for.

Code for America
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Four Lessons from Our Journey to Deliver Human-Centered Integrated Benefits

Four Lessons from Our Journey to Deliver Human-Centered Integrated Benefits

Code for America partnered with the CBPP, Civilla, and Nava to launch the Integrated Benefits Initiative, testing and piloting human-centered approaches to improve outcomes and learn what an optimal safety net could look like. This article describes key takeaways from short-term pilots implemented as part of this project.

Code for America
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Helping More Than 1.3 Million Schoolchildren Access Pandemic EBT—in Just One Week

Helping More Than 1.3 Million Schoolchildren Access Pandemic EBT—in Just One Week

In response to the COVID-19 crisis, the federal government authorized a new emergency program, Pandemic EBT (P-EBT), to replace school meals with money for groceries while schools are closed. Code for America describes its efforts to launch an accessible, online P-EBT application under an accelerated timeline due to to immense demand caused by the pandemic.

Code for America
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How Human-Centered Is our Social Safety Net?

How Human-Centered Is our Social Safety Net?

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.

Code for America
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How Louisiana Rapidly Scaled Pilot Solutions to Combat COVID-19

How Louisiana Rapidly Scaled Pilot Solutions to Combat COVID-19

In response to exploding demand for social services during COVID-19, the Louisiana Department of children and Family services implemented text-message alerts and reminders for the state’s entire SNAP caseload, launched a text-based public campaign to help people understand and apply for SNAP benefits, and hired SNAP recipients to provide client feedback on communications and policy decisions.

Code for America
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How the Next Administration Can Use Technology To Prevent Another Unemployment Insurance Meltdown

How the Next Administration Can Use Technology To Prevent Another Unemployment Insurance Meltdown

Clearing applicant backlogs is an important solution to the UI crisis. State governments and federal agencies could facilitate access to public benefits by collaborating to develop interoperable technology platforms that use open source software and modular design. Panelists discuss opportunities to prevent future UI crises by reimagining how governments deliver benefits to their citizens.

New America, Code for America, Benefits Data Trust, Beeck Center for Social Impact + Innovation at Georgetown University, Day One Project
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In Their Own Words: Parents Help Us Understand Barriers to Accessing WIC

In Their Own Words: Parents Help Us Understand Barriers to Accessing WIC

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.

Code for America
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Integrated Benefits Initiative: Best Practices in Texting

Integrated Benefits Initiative: Best Practices in Texting

Code for America offers government agencies a general overview of getting started with implementing text messaging services for clear, responsive communication during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Code for America
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Keeping Students Fed in an Uncertain Back to School Season: What We Learned from P-EBT, and What Comes Next

Keeping Students Fed in an Uncertain Back to School Season: What We Learned from P-EBT, and What Comes Next

Code for America describes its work building the P-EBT online application and the consulting it provided to 10 states regarding implementing the program in a quick, effective, and human-centered way. Despite herculean efforts among human services and education agencies to get P-EBT off the ground, there were a few key technological, operational, and logistical barriers that consistently got in the way and hampered a smooth rollout of the program across the country.

Code for America
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Making Our Systems See People

Making Our Systems See People

Code for America CEO introduces the Safety Net Innovation Lab in a TED Talk, their initiative to work with state governments to reimagine and rebuild delivery of accessible and equitable benefits. This article also includes the video of Renteria’s talk and a transcript.

Code for America
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Moving Child Care Assistance Applications Online Means More Families Get the Help They Deserve

Moving Child Care Assistance Applications Online Means More Families Get the Help They Deserve

Hennepin County, Minnesota, partnered with Code for America to develop a six-month long experiment where participants were given the option to submit the normal paper-based application or opt into an online application.

Code for America
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National Safety Net Scorecard

National Safety Net Scorecard

The existing system for evaluating state safety net programs does not adequately capture the human experience of accessing services. This new National Safety Net Scorecard is a more meaningful set of metrics that can effectively asses the true state of the current program delivery landscape and measure progress over time, creating a more human-centered safety net.

Code for America
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Overcoming Barriers: Finding Better Ways to Ask GetCalFresh Applicants About Income

Overcoming Barriers: Finding Better Ways to Ask GetCalFresh Applicants About Income

County workers typically spend most of their time trying to get income information right during eligibility interviews. This article provides several recommendations for asking about income, accounting for cognitive biases, under-reporting, and complexities in reporting income.

Code for America
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Overcoming Barriers: Helping Self-Employed Applicants Access Their Full CalFresh Benefit

Overcoming Barriers: Helping Self-Employed Applicants Access Their Full CalFresh Benefit

People who are self-employed can receive a higher CalFresh benefit amount because of a 40% automatic deduction for expenses. Yet, many who would be considered self-employed for the purpose of CalFresh don’t think of themselves as self-employed. Code for America researched how to help CalFresh applicants correctly identify themselves as self-employed. This article describes their various experiments and efforts to help people understand their status as self-employed.

Code for America
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Pandemic EBT Policy + Delivery Memo

Pandemic EBT Policy + Delivery Memo

Policy memo by Code for America regarding how to deliver P-EBT benefits during the COVID-19 crisis.

Code for America
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People Lead the Way: How GetCalFresh has adapted qualitative research during a public health crisis

People Lead the Way: How GetCalFresh has adapted qualitative research during a public health crisis

This article describes how Code for America conducted qualitative research within its GetCalFresh application by asking families to tell them about their familial, housing, and financial situations. From client messages, they gathered information regarding how to make changes to their product to keep their work people-centered.

Code for America
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Proof Points for Human-Centered Benefits Administration

Proof Points for Human-Centered Benefits Administration

Code for America’s Integrated Benefits Initiative has been working in partnership with the State of Colorado to demonstrate how user-centered approaches lead to measurably better delivery of safety net programs. This article describes their work with the state of Colorado in simplifying how clients report common life changes that can affect their eligibility.

Code for America
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Removing Barriers: Public Benefits and Voter Registration

Removing Barriers: Public Benefits and Voter Registration

The GetCalFresh team, the California Department of Social Services, and the California Secretary of State’s office worked together to create a simplified, accessible voter registration experience with clients. When people come to GetCalFresh.org, they are looking to apply for food assistance, so the state of California did not want voter registration to become an obstacle to the goal of getting food assistance. Thus, rather than directing clients to anther website, they offered to text clients a link to the CA Secretary of State’s voter website with directions on how to register.

Code for America
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Renewed Principles of Delivery-Driven Government: Evolving and expanding our vision for how government should serve the public

Renewed Principles of Delivery-Driven Government: Evolving and expanding our vision for how government should serve the public

Code for America initially introduced the concept of Delivery-Driven Government in 2018. This article refreshes its original principles and expands on what the organization has learned to make its concepts clearer.

Code for America
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Safety Net Services Built for Outcomes

Safety Net Services Built for Outcomes

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.

Code for America
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Simple Changes Can Make a Big Difference for Clients Accessing Government Benefits

Simple Changes Can Make a Big Difference for Clients Accessing Government Benefits

Our work with Pennsylvania to implement user experience and user interface changes shows that innovation can be easier to implement than it might seem.

Code for America
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Technology, Accessibility, and the Child Tax Credit

Technology, Accessibility, and the Child Tax Credit

Code for America describes its work building GetCTC, an e-filer that allows people to file simplified tax returns as specified in the revenue procedure required for the Child Tax Credit.

Code for America
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The Missed Opportunity in Online Benefits Applications: Mobile First

The Missed Opportunity in Online Benefits Applications: Mobile First

The ubiquity of mobile devices makes it imperative to build “mobile first” services, i.e. services built with the expectation that they will primarily be accessed on mobile devices. This article also outlines important considerations and suggestions for implementing mobile-first user interfaces.

Code for America
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The Qualitative Research Practice Guide

The Qualitative Research Practice Guide

This guide touches on everything from Code for America’s core research philosophy, to our approach to ethics and trauma-informed research, to specific research methods. It also includes plenty of practical tips on planning and executing research, as well as how to synthesize your findings into action.

Code for America
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The Transformative Power of a People-Centered, Digital-First Safety Net

The Transformative Power of a People-Centered, Digital-First Safety Net

Code for America discusses the importance of a people-centered, digital-first safety net. Tools of technology, policy, and good implementation can advance a bold vision that will allow the nation to push through the end of the COVID-19 crisis.

Code for America
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Think Big, Start Small: How Implementing Flexible Interviews Improves Benefit Delivery

Think Big, Start Small: How Implementing Flexible Interviews Improves Benefit Delivery

LA County and GetCalFresh made access to food assistance more equitable by offering a more flexible interview process.

Code for America
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Toolkit for Helping States Implement People-Centered Pandemic EBT

Toolkit for Helping States Implement People-Centered Pandemic EBT

With the extension and expansion of P-EBT during COVID and the Food and Nutrition Service releasing new guidance, states have an opportunity to effectively deliver essential resources to children and families. Code for America built this toolkit of resources to share recommendations and promising practices around the implementation of P-EBT and to support state agencies and partners tasked with the development of P-EBT programs.

Code for America
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Using Client-Centered Communications to Improve the Benefits Renewal Process

Using Client-Centered Communications to Improve the Benefits Renewal Process

Understanding the impact of churn and how agencies can better use communication channels to help clients keep their benefits.

Code for America
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What Happens When People Feel Ownership Over Their Benefits

What Happens When People Feel Ownership Over Their Benefits

An interview with Wendy De La Rosa, assistant professor at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. De La Rosa discusses how the concept of “psychological ownership” can encourage people to take up benefits they are eligible for.

Code for America
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Why Californians need food assistance: The stories behind the numbers

Why Californians need food assistance: The stories behind the numbers

Californians who receive food assistance come from all backgrounds, but many share a similar story: they were barely getting by financially when they were tipped into crisis by an unexpected expense or loss of income. This site shares their stories.

Code for America
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Benefits Enrollment Field Guide

Benefits Enrollment Field Guide

The Benefits Enrollment Field Guide looks at the landscape of America’s safety net benefits experience in 2023 and tracks the differences from our 2019 assessment based on expanded evaluation criteria. It also highlights successful paths to equitable, human-centered experiences. It examines online enrollment for Modified Adjusted Gross Income (MAGI) Medicaid, SNAP, TANF, the Child Care Assistance Program (CCAP), and WIC.

Code for America
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Making Public Benefits More Accessible in Minnesota

Making Public Benefits More Accessible in Minnesota

This report highlights work with Minnesota and includes nine suggestions for states seeking to launch their own integrated benefits applications

Code for America
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Building Human-Centered Benefits Renewal Processes with Client Equity in Mind

Building Human-Centered Benefits Renewal Processes with Client Equity in Mind

Lessons from piloting expanded ex parte renewals in Minnesota

Code for America and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
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