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Digital Identity and the Federal Government: Recent Actions and Interest

In recent years, the federal government has taken notice of cybersecurity, identity management, authentication, and identity proofing issues. This short resource guide highlights some key actions at the federal level around digital identity topics in 2022.

Beeck Center for Social Impact + Innovation
Report

18F User Experience Design Guide

18F’s UX Guide documenting their practices and helpful resources. UX in government involves doing design research, creating wireframes and prototypes to guide development, and explicit attention to organizational relationships and dynamics.

18F
Toolkit

The Privacy-Bias Trade-Off

Safeguarding privacy and addressing algorithmic bias can pose an under-recognized trade-off. This brief documents tradeoffs by examining the U.S. government’s recent efforts to introduce government-wide equity assessments of federal programs. The authors propose a range of policy solutions that would enable agencies to navigate the privacy-bias trade-off.

Stanford University, Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence
Policy Brief

Lessons Churned: Measuring the Impact of Churn in Health and Human Services Programs on Participants and State and Local Agencies

Paper presenting preliminary lessons learned about SNAP churn derived from states participating in the Work Support Strategies project. It defines churn and outlines its consequences, explores approaches to measuring churns and looks at possible approaches to reduce churn.

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
Report

What is a (Digital) Identity Wallet? A Systematic Literature Review

There is a growing interest in the concept of digital wallets, but no generally accepted definition of the concept or its features. This systematic review examines prior studies to offer a definition of digital identity wallets.

Annual Computers, Software, and Applications Conference (COMPSAC)
Academic Article

Facial Recognition Technologies: A Primer

This primer is written for a non-technical audience to increase understanding of the terminology, applications, and difficulties of evaluating facial recognition technologies.

Algorithmic Justice League
Report

Agency Inventories of AI Use Cases

In accordance with Executive Order 13960, Promoting the Use of Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence in the Federal Government, Federal agencies began publishing their first annual inventories of artificial intelligence (AI) use cases in June 2022 and the following months. On this page, users can access inventories published to date.

National Artificial Intelligence Initiative
Government Documents

Establishing Emergency Cash Assistance Programs

A guide by New America to help cities and states set up cash assistance programs for their residents, based on the Alia Cares platform that the National Domestic Workers Alliance built to run their Coronavirus Cares Fund that provides emergency assistance for home care workers to support them in staying safe and at home to slow the spread of COVID.

New America
Report

Against Predictive Optimization: On the Legitimacy of Decision-Making Algorithms that Optimize Predictive Accuracy

This academic paper examines predictive optimization, a category of decision-making algorithms that use machine learning (ML) to predict future outcomes of interest about individuals. Through this examination, the authors explore how predictive optimization can raise concerns that make its use illegitimate and challenge claims about predictive optimization's accuracy, efficiency, and fairness.

Princeton University, Microsoft Research
Academic Article

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
Non-Academic Article

Conducting Outreach for Benefits Cross Enrollment

This resource outlines strategies for cross-enrollment outreach, which can break down silos between programs and reach applicants who may be eligible for under-enrolled benefits programs.

Beeck Center for Social Impact + Innovation at Georgetown University
Report

Biden-Harris PMA Webinar: Streamlining Service Delivery for Five Life Experiences

The Performance.gov team hosted a webinar featuring federal customer experience (CX) changemakers from across government and focused on the nine CX projects that aim to address pain points learned about through human-centered design research.

Performance.gov
Video

Integrating Renewals and Correspondence

This resource highlights strategies for integrating benefits renewals and correspondence, potentially reducing administrative burdens for both clients and caseworkers.

Beeck Center for Social Impact + Innovation at Georgetown University
Report

Improving Access to Public Benefits and Customer Experience: Key Actions and Best Practices

Comprehensive and sustained improvement in benefits access and customer experience requires changes across policy, operations, technology, staffing, procurement, and more. This guide offers a collection of actions and best practices for states to apply.

Office of Management and Budget, Aspen Financial Security Program
Report

Communicating About the Social Implications of AI: A FrameWorks Strategic Brief

Research identified five key obstacles that researchers, activists, and advocates face in efforts to open critical public conversations about AI’s relationship with inequity and advance needed policies.

Frameworks Initiative
No items found.

Making Integrated Benefits Easy to Access Online and on Mobile Phones

This resource describes how different agencies have updated their systems to increase online and mobile access to benefits information and applications, including using text messages to share benefits information with residents. These approaches enable residents to more effectively access benefits information, and can meet resident needs across a range of accessibility requirements.

Beeck Center for Social Impact + Innovation at Georgetown University
Report

Removing Barriers to Access From Remote Identity Proofing

Some states are adding unnecessary complexity to benefits application processes by requiring Remote Identity Proofing (RIDP) before applying or truncating other business. This paper provides background on RIDP, explains when it’s required, and makes recommendations on how states can preserve the security of online interfaces without the barrier of RIDP.

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
Report

State of California: Benefits and Risks of Generative Artificial Intelligence Report

This report on the use of Generative AI in State government presents an initial analysis of the potential benefits to individuals, communities, government and State government workers, while also exploring potential risks.

California Government Operations Agency
Report

Cross-Sector Insights From the Rules as Code Community of Practice

In this report, the Digital Benefits Network shares learnings from the Rules as Code Community of Practice. Insights are grouped along core themes expressed by cross-sector practitioners, including complexity in policies, interest in sharing knowledge, tools, and code, the need for more training and technical assistance, and willingness to collaborate on an open standard for writing rules and developing a shared code library.

Beeck Center for Social Impact + Innovation
Report

Rules as Code Demo Day | Demo 5: mRelief SNAP Eligibility Screener | Zareena Meyn and Dize Hacioglu

At Rules as Code Demo Day Executive Director Zareena Mayn and Chief Technology Officer Dize Hacioglu of mRelief demoed the code for their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) eligibility screener. mRelief is a women-led team that provides a web-based and text message-based SNAP eligibility screener to all 53 states and territories that participate in SNAP. They demonstrated how they have modularized their code to host federal program rules and state-specific rules.

Beeck Center for Social Impact + Innovation at Georgetown University
Video

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
Non-Academic Article

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
Non-Academic Article

UX research during crisis: understanding rapidly evolving user needs to inform responsive design

Important considerations for understanding user needs to inform responsive design in rapidly changing contexts are discussed, including how context, threat perception, decision-making, and crisis affects disaster management and UX research.

UX Collective
Non-Academic Article

Increasing Data Analytics Capacity in State TANF Agencies: The TANF Data Collaborative Approach

Government agencies at all levels collect administrative data in the course of their day-to-day operations. While such information has been used to determine effectiveness through program evaluations for many years, program administrators view it increasingly as a valuable resource that can also be used to improve program performance. For example, administrative data from employment and public benefits programs such as Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) can offer insights into families’ unmet needs and ways to improve services.

MDRC, Coleridge Initiative
Policy Brief

Effective Strategies to Collect Address Changes from Medicaid Beneficiaries via State Websites

As a part of Benefit Data Trust (BDT)’s Medicaid Churn Learning Collaborative, BDT has created a memo describing strategies for states to collect current mailing addresses of Medicaid beneficiaries in advance of the Medicaid continuous coverage requirement — in effect under the federal public health emergency — unwinding.

Benefits Data Trust
Policy Brief

Algorithmic Accountability for the Public Sector

This report presents evidence on the use of algorithmic accountability policies in different contexts from the perspective of those implementing these tools, and explores the limits of legal and policy mechanisms in ensuring safe and accountable algorithmic systems.

Ada Lovelace Institute (Ada), AI Now Institute (AI Now), Open Government Partnership (OGP)
Report

Creating a More Dynamic Unemployment Insurance System: The Case for Eliminating Experience Rating

Policy analysis and recommendations for eliminating the experience rating system in UI.

Niskanen Center
Policy Brief

Centering Workers—How to Modernize Unemployment Insurance Technology

This report, jointly authored by The Century Foundation, the National Employment Law Project, and Philadelphia Legal Assistance, presents the findings of an intensive study of state efforts to modernize their unemployment insurance (UI) benefit systems. This is the first report to detail how UI modernization has altered the customer experience. It offers lessons drawn from state modernization efforts and recommends user-friendly design and implementation methods to help states succeed in future projects.

The Century Foundation
Report

Better Identity at Five Years: An Updated Policy Blueprint and Report Card

In 2018 the Better Identity Coalition released a Policy Blueprint outlining five key initiatives that to solve the majority of America’s challenges in the digital identity space. This report from 2024 grades progress on each of the original Blueprint’s five key initiatives – as well as the 19 items that were contained in the “action plan” to support those initiatives.

Better Identity Coalition
Report

Federal plain language guidelines

Guidelines to help organizations write in compliance with the Plain Writing Act of 2010.

Plainlanguage.gov
Organization Website

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
News

Sprint 2 Report | Michigan Unemployment | Improving the delivery of unemployment insurance benefits

This project documents the work of Civilla and New America to improve the delivery of unemployment benefits for claimants in Michigan. This project is one phase of a larger body of work led by New America to improve the claimant and staff experience with unemployment insurance across the country.

Civilla, New America
Report

New Jersey’s Worker-centered Approach to Improving the Administration of Unemployment Insurance

This paper describes the policy choices, business practices, and technology innovations that the State of New Jersey is employing to ensure that the right people get benefits — accurately and on time.

Heldrich Center for Workforce Development, Rutgers University
Report

Executive Order on the Safe, Secure, and Trustworthy Development and Use of Artificial Intelligence

Issued on October 30, 2023, this Executive Order provides guidance to support the responsible development of Artificial Intelligence.

The White House
No items found.

SNAP Online: A Review of State Government SNAP Websites

There is significant variation amongst states’ SNAP websites and their online services. This report summarizes the types of services available and which states offer them.

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
Non-Academic Article

Text to Connect: Using Text Message Outreach to Reduce SNAP Churn (Full Guide)

Nearly 1 in 5 lose SNAP benefits during the recertification process. When SNAP-eligible residents want to start receiving benefits again, they must go through the lengthy process of reapplication, generating administrative burden and cost. Text messaging allows for direct communication with clients to support them through the recertification process. This guidebook aims to equip state and local agencies with the practical insights they need to develop a text messaging outreach program for SNAP recertification.

Beeck Center for Social Impact + Innovation at Georgetown University, Benefits Data Trust
Toolkit

An Agile Software Development Solicitation Guide

Government solicitations to procure custom software are often long, complicated, and take months. By using 18F’s agile contract format, agencies can hire an agile software contractor with a quickly-written dozen-page solicitation, allowing for immense savings in time and money.

18F
Toolkit

Algorithmic Accountability: A Primer

The primer–originally prepared for the Progressive Congressional Caucus’ Tech Algorithm Briefing–explores the trade-offs and debates about algorithms and accountability across several key ethical dimensions, including fairness and bias; opacity and transparency; and lack of standards for auditing.

Data & Society
Report

Configuring participation: on how we involve people in design.

This paper explores three important questions for understanding how HCI configures participation; Who initiates, directs and benefits from user participation in design? In what forms does user participation occur? How is control shared with users in design? In answering these questions, the authors consider the conceptual, ethical and pragmatic problems this raises for current participatory HCI research. Finally, they offer directions for future work explicitly dealing with the configuration of participation.

Association for Computing Machinery
Academic Article

The Government Is Helping People Pay Rent, But Something’s Gone Wrong

Rent relief distribution in 2020 was slow and inequitable, because local programs instituted strict eligibility criteria beyond what was required by the CARES Act. As a result of these hurdles, incomplete applications were a major barrier to distributing funds. This report describes the rent relief challenges during the pandemic, as well as a few possible fixes to help the next round of aid distribution.

New America
Non-Academic Article

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
News

The Benefits Cliff Dilemma: Navigating Wage Increases and Public Benefits

The goal of the brief is to encourage policy makers and employers to consider benefits cliffs as they look to create mandatory wage increases, with a look at a legislative action in NYC.

Financial Health Network
Case Study

How APIs can help WIC better meet staff and participants’ needs

WIC programs across the country are already adapting and evolving to meet their participants’ needs. An API standard, which allows agencies to plug digital tools into existing technology systems, would remove some of the key barriers to innovating and sharing technology tools between agencies.

Nava Public Benefit Corporation
Non-Academic Article

Using Data Matching and Targeted Outreach to Enroll Families With Young Children in WIC

WIC enrollment has declined over the past decade, but evidence from randomized control trials indicates that using data from other programs to identify WIC-eligible families and following up with text-based outreach can boost program participation.

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
Case Study

Government By Algorithm: Artificial Intelligence In Federal Administrative Agencies

Little is known about how agencies are currently using AI systems, and little attention has been devoted to how agencies acquire such tools or oversee their use.

Stanford RegLab
Report

Going Big with Human-Centered Redesign

Redesigning benefits applications, renewals, and correspondence using human-centered design is one of the most impactful things state and local government agencies can do to ensure that all eligible residents can access social safety net resources. This guide includes practical insights for benefits administrators considering a comprehensive redesign of benefits delivery processes.

Civilla, Beeck Center for Social Impact + Innovation at Georgetown University
Toolkit

Artifice and Intelligence

This piece outlines the Privacy Center’s decision to stop using the words “artificial intelligence,” “AI,” and “machine learning” in their work.

Center on Privacy & Technology at Georgetown Law
Non-Academic Article

Envisioning a Federal Rules as Code Approach to Public Benefits Eligibility

Digitizing public benefits policy will make the biggest impact for administrators and Americans, but only if it happens at the highest level of government.

Beeck Center for Social Impact + Innovation at Georgetown University
Report

The IRS as a Benefits Administrator

The IRS is arguably the single most critical benefits administrator in the country, given its responsibility for tax credit-based relief programs, and COVID-19 relief payments. Despite these programs’ incredible progress in reducing poverty, and despite great strides by the IRS to implement them successfully, accessing IRS benefits remains too difficult for many low-income families. This report presents a comprehensive agenda to increase benefit coverage rates, simplify Americans’ interactions with the IRS, and decrease the portion of IRS benefits diverted to third parties.

New America
Report

Automated Decision-Making Systems and Discrimination

This guidebook offers an introduction to the risks of discrimination when using automated decision-making systems. This report also includes helpful definitions related to automation.

AlgorithmWatch
Report

Domain Shift and Emerging Questions in Facial Recognition Technology

This policy brief offers recommendations to policymakers relating to the computational and human sides of facial recognition technologies based on a May 2020 workshop with leading computer scientists, legal scholars, and representatives from industry, government, and civil society

Stanford University, Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence
Academic Article

Aggressive State Outreach Can Help Reach the 12 Million Non-Filers Eligible for Stimulus Payments

Aggressive outreach by states is necessary to ensure that 12 million Americans do not risk missing out on the stimulus payments provided by the CARES Act.

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
Report

Nudging Benefits Access in the Right Direction

Article describing partnership between NYC Department of Social Services, Benefits Data Trust, and the Robin Hood foundation to send targeted text messages to SNAP recipients to encourage them to successfully compete the annual recertification process required to stay in the program.

Benefits Data Trust
Case Study

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
News

Opening Keynote–a Fireside Chat with the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee on Identity Fraud

In this video, Susan S. Gibson, chair of the Pandemic Response Accountability Committee's (PRAC) Identity Fraud and Redress Working Group, speaks with Jeremy Grant of the Better Identity Coalition, about the challenges of identity fraud for benefits program during the COVID-19 pandemic. This video comes from the Better Identity Coalition’s 2022 policy forum, “Identity, Authentication, and the Road Ahead."

Better Identity Coalition
Video

ideas42 Methodology

This article introduces ideas42, a non-profit behavioral research and design firm applying insights from behavioral sciences, including behavioral economics (BE), social psychology, and other disciplines, for social good. Their behavioral design methodology is human-centered, but it incorporates scientific insights and iterative testing, applying observations about how people choose and act from experimental academic research to inform qualitative research.

The Communication Initiative Network
Toolkit

Rules as Code Demo Day | Demo 7: MITRE Corporation (CCASH) | Joe Ditre and Frank Ruscil

MITRE’s Joe Ditre and Frank Ruscil demoed the code for the Comprehensive Careers and Supports for Households (C-CASH) at Rules as Code Demo Day. The MITRE team expanded the accessibility of the Policy Rules Database and the Cost-of-Living Database (the prior demo) by creating a web service API and a front-end Window’s application called C-CASH Analytic Tool (CAT). CAT provides a more scalable, flexible, and portable functionality which allows end-users to generate various households to run eligibility scenarios across different U.S. counties and states. They are currently working to create a national data hub and analytics tool, starting with utilizing U.S. Census data and populating the data warehouse by pushing large amounts of data through the PRD.

Beeck Center for Social Impact + Innovation at Georgetown University
Video

Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy has identified five principles that should guide the design, use, and deployment of automated systems to protect the American public in the age of artificial intelligence. These principles help provide guidance whenever automated systems can meaningfully impact the public’s rights, opportunities, or access to critical needs.

White House Office of Science and Technology Policy
Government Documents

Medicaid and CHIP Eligibility Renewals: A Communications Toolkit

This toolkit has important information to help inform people with Medicaid or CHIP about steps to take to renew their coverage or find other health care options.

Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services
Toolkit

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
Non-Academic Article

Large Language Models (LLMs): An Explainer

In this blog post, CSET’s Natural Language Processing (NLP) Engineer, James Dunham, helps explain LLMs in plain English.

Center for Security and Emerging Technology
No items found.

Roadmap: NIST Special Publication 800-63-4 Digital Identity Guidelines

The Revision 4 of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Special Publication 800-63, Digital Identity Guidelines, intends to respond to the changing digital landscape that has emerged since the last major revision of this suite was published in 2017 — including the real-world implications of online risks. This roadmap outlines NIST's project milestones and opportunities to provide feedback through March 2023.

National Institute of Standards and Technology
Government Documents

Combatting Identify Fraud in Government Benefits Programs

This post argues that for the types of large-scale, organized fraud attacks that many state benefits systems saw during the pandemic, solutions grounded in cybersecurity methods may be far more effective than creating or adopting automated systems.

Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT)
Non-Academic Article

In-Depth Equity Assessment Guide

Initially created to inform federal staff at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, this tool describes how to conduct intensive equity assessments of existing programs, policies, and processes. It may be useful for state and local governments, tribal governments, and other private or non-profit organizations focused on programs and policies relating to health and human services.

Health and Human Services Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation
Government Documents

Rules as Code Demo Day Highlights

Building on our February 2022 report Benefit Eligibility Rules as Code: Reducing the Gap Between Policy and Service Delivery for the Safety Net, the Beeck Center’s Digital Benefits Network (DBN) hosted Rules as Code Demo Day on June 28, 2022 where there were eight demonstrations of projects and code followed by a collaborative problem solving session on how to continue advancing rules as code for the U.S. social safety net.

The Beeck Center for Social Impact + Innovation
Video

GSA extends login.gov access to states and localities

This article describes the General Services Administration’s efforts to get a limited number of state and local governments to try login.gov with their federally funded programs.

Fed Scoop
News

A Playbook for Improving Unemployment Insurance Delivery

A playbook by New America describing lessons learned from past recessions, recent pandemic-inspired innovations, and complementary benefit spaces like SNAP and WIC.

New America
Toolkit

Digital Benefits Hub Launch Webinar

The Digital Benefits Network and APHSA launched the Digital Benefits Hub on October 20, 2022. This video provides context on both organizations, the inspiration and vision for the hub, a demo of key features, and audience Q&A

Beeck Center for Social Impact + Innovation at Georgetown University, American Public Human Services Association (APHSA)
Video

Sharing Government Software: How Agencies are Cooperatively Building Mission-Critical Software

This report reviews the features of intergovernmental software cooperatives, examines several different examples, looks at different categories of cooperatives and their governance structures, and inventories known cooperatives both within and outside of the United States. Agencies rethinking how they obtain technical functionality, budget officials looking to control costs and outcomes, or private funders that want to improve public services may find this report particularly useful.

Beeck Center for Social Impact + Innovation at Georgetown University
Report

Cutting Red Tape for Americans Renewing Their Health Coverage

After the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency (PHE) ended, the Facing a Financial Shock team at the U.S. Digital Service (USDS) partnered with the Center for Medicaid and CHIP Services (CMCS) and state Medicaid agencies to improve eligibility and enrollment systems. By mobilizing a small strike team of implementers to analyze the software and processes that are used to complete health coverage renewals, USDS helped CMCS and state teams tackle major challenges.

United States Digital Service
Case Study

18F Agile-based project approach

18F describes its Agile-based project approach combining iterative software development, product management, user-centered design, and DevOps.

18F
Toolkit

The Wait List as Redistributive Policy: Access and Burdens in the Subsidized Childcare System

This article theorizes the wait list as an underexamined vehicle of administrative burden. Focusing on the example of subsidized chidl care, the article's findings suggest wait lists as understudied but consequential sites of opaque policymaking that shape access to critical social services and the legibility of unmet need.

RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences
Academic Article

Benefits of Interoperability in the Health & Human Services System

The A-87 Exception presents a unique opportunity to transform the health and human services delivery system. It delivers an integrated funding mechanism which allows good business design to apply across a broad range of programs and services. It also provides benefits to states, customers, and federal partners, ranging from cost containment, to improved customer service, enhanced security and privacy, program integrity, and better outcomes for children and families.

American Public Human Services Association (APHSA)
Report

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
Non-Academic Article

What Works Cities Assessment Guide

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.

What Works Cities
Toolkit

Elevating Family Input in TANF and Child Support Programs: Resources for Program Staff, Leaders, and Families

This expansive toolkit provides guidance, real world examples, and resources to help TANF and child support programs engage the families they serve in improving service delivery, policy, and program operations.

Office of Planning, Research & Evaluation, Administration for Children & Families
Toolkit

MyFriendBen Demo at the Cross-Sector Rules as Code Roundtable

In this video, MyFriendBen.org Executive Director Elise Henson and Gary Community Ventures VP of Technology Brian Hiatt provide a demonstration of their new benefits eligibility screening tool in Colorado. The Cross-Sector Rules as Code Roundtable on February 22, 2024 was hosted by Rules as Code Community of Practice at the Digital Benefits Network.

Gary Community Ventures
Video

Artificial Intelligence: Background, Selected Issues, and Policy Considerations

This report aims to help congressional leaders understand AI, and provide key terms and definitions that would be important in crafting or understanding potential legislation on the topic.

Congressional Research Service
Government Documents

COVID-19 Exposes How Many Unemployment Websites Are Truly Terrible

Unemployment applicants across the country are experiencing technical issues as they try to file applications, and these difficulties are exacerbated by the old architecture that state governments use to maintain their websites.

Huffington Post
News

Streamlining SNAP for the Gig Economy

This issue brief explores how states can leverage existing policy to better support self-employed workers. The Simplified Self-Employment Deduction option available to state SNAP programs is a key example of one such supportive policy. This brief discusses the advantages of this policy option, and highlights the experiences of officials in Alabama, Maryland, Nebraska, and South Carolina, in addition to offering a roadmap for other states.

Benefits Data Trust
Policy Brief

Designing for Multilingual Translation

Complex benefits information creates unnecessary barriers for residents and navigators who must understand what’s relevant to them so they can receive benefits. For non-native English speakers, these barriers are exacerbated. This resource guide outlines approaches for translating content to improve equitable access to benefits.

Beeck Center for Social Impact + Innovation at Georgetown University
Report

Making the Case for Human-Centered Design in Government

Human-centered design is a problem-solving method that puts people at the center of the problem and aims to design solutions that address the needs of the people. Embracing such design methods in government is imperative to finding solutions that work for the people.

GovLoop
Non-Academic Article

The Social Life of Algorithmic Harms

This series of essays seeks to expand our vocabulary of algorithmic harms to help protect against them.

Data & Society
Non-Academic Article

State Software Budgeting Handbook

Handbook by 18F designed for executives, budget specialists, legislators, and other “non-technical” decision-makers who fund or oversee state government technology projects that receive federal funding and implement the necessary technology to support federal programs. It aids in setting projects up for success by asking the right questions, identifying the right outcomes, and equally important, empowering decision-makers with a basic knowledge of the fundamental principles of modern software design.

18F
Toolkit

Updates to the OECD’s definition of an AI system explained

In 2023, OECD member countries approved a revised version of the Organisation’s definition of an AI system. This post explains the reasoning behind the updated definition.

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)
Non-Academic Article

AI-Powered SNAP Modernization

This report explores how AI is currently used, and how it might be used in the future, to support administrative actions that agency staff complete when processing customers’ SNAP cases. In addition to desk and primary research, this brief was informed by input from APHSA’s wide network of state, county, and city members and national partners in the human services and related sectors.

American Public Human Services Association
No items found.

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.

Colorado Department of Human Services
Report

CARES Act Stimulus Payments Have Reached 160 Million Households — But Could Reach Millions More

Though the CARES Act provided much-needed relief to millions of Americans, around 5-10 million of the most vulnerable American households have not yet received their full payment. This report lays out a set of technical fixes regarding the delivery of the first stimulus payments, a set of fixes to address other critical tax credits, and several medium-term reforms to increase earned income tax credit (EITC) access for low-income families.

New America
Report

Plain Language 101

Jack Ding from the NYC Mayors Office for Economic Opportunity gives a brief training on plain language writing.

NYC Mayor's Office for Economic Opportunity
Video

Digital Identity Guidelines: Authentication and Lifecycle Management

These guidelines provide technical requirements for federal agencies implementing digital identity services and are not intended to constrain the development or use of standards outside of this purpose. These guidelines focus on the authentication of subjects interacting with government systems over open networks, establishing that a given claimant is a subscriber who has been previously authenticated.

National Institute of Standards and Technology
Report

Designing an eligibility screener tool for Montana WIC

This case study describes Nava's with the state of Montana’s Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) agency to build an eligibility screener tool.

Nava Public Benefit Corporation
Case Study

Improving Digital Identity – Where Government Can Help

In this panel conversation from Better Identity Coalition’s 2022 policy forum “Identity, Authentication, and the Road Ahead” presenters from the General Services Administration, the Transportation Security Administration, the Consumer First Coalition, and the congressional branch, discuss government’s role in digital identity. The discussion covers a range of topics, including mobile driver’s licenses, the Social Security Administration’s electronic Consent Based Social Security Number Verification service (eCBSV), and digital identity innovation.

Better Identity Coalition
Video

How to Improve Unemployment Insurance for People with Disabilities

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 Century Foundation
Report

Exploring a new way to make eligibility rules easier to implement

Programs like Medicaid and SNAP are managed at the federal level, administered at the state level, and often executed at the local level. Because there are so many in-betweens, there is significant duplicated effort, demonstrating the need to simplify eligibility rules to facilitate easier implementation.

18F
Non-Academic Article

Toolkit for Supporting Young Families Through Human Services

This toolkit provides links to a multitude of resources to help health and human services leaders evaluate and intentionally design programs to meet the unique needs of young families.

American Public Human Services Association (APHSA)
Toolkit

Administrative Burden: Policymaking by Other Means: Professor Don Moynihan

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.

University College Dublin
Video

Healing Policy Papercuts: Aligning small conflicts in application requirements makes public benefits easier to access

Integrating eligibility and enrollment benefits is an increasingly important undertaking for state governments around the country. However, states already in the process of integrating benefits are encountering an issue: differing and contradictory submission requirements dictated by the federal agencies running these benefits programs. Aligning these fragmented requirements is necessary to build a truly human-centered process for state benefits programs.

Nava Public Benefit Corporation
Non-Academic Article

Reducing Poverty and Advancing Equity: A Retrospective

This retrospective looks at the way the NYCOpportunity initiative worked across City government, partnering with agencies to initiate new approaches and enhance city practices. It also highlights key areas of focus for the NYC Opportunity team between 2014 and 2021.

NYC Mayor's Office for Economic Opportunity
Report

What does it take for a public interest technology project to succeed?

This article describes the necessary factors for a public interest technology project to succeed, including leadership support, organizational and team support, proper scoping, time and resources, and a sustainability plan.

New America
Non-Academic Article

How Digital IDs Can Transform Government Services

Governments around the world are digitizing how they deliver services to citizens. And yet, without a secure and reliable way for people to prove their identity online, digital transformation efforts face a considerable barrier. This panel discussion, hosted by the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF), focuses on the potential benefits and concerns surrounding digital ID and identity proofing technology as well as the legal and technical barriers for use.

Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF)
Video
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