Tens of millions of Americans seek and receive public benefits each year.

From accessing affordable childcare to assistance buying healthy food, navigating government benefits can be complicated. Oftentimes, a significant event in a person's life, like becoming a parent or losing a loved one, causes that person to seek out benefits from the government. The process of learning about, applying for, and receiving assistance from federal benefits programs is one of the few and most critical digital experiences many members of the public will ever have with the federal government. Government needs to get this right.

But the federal government has no Department of Parenthood. No Ministry for Bereavement. Funding and administering all of the various benefits programs is the responsibility of dozens of agencies and sub-agencies. This means that, for the public, the process of establishing benefits eligibility is a daunting one, and especially daunting during hard times.

For more than five years, 10x has invested in technology that improves the public's experience with benefits programs. From finding better ways to help people identify potential benefits to text notifications keeping them up-to-date at each stage in the process, technology can even let people know if someone has fraudulently accessed their account!

By investing in technology that makes it faster and easier for people to acquire the benefits they are eligible for, 10x is helping the government deliver better services for millions of Americans.

Check out some of our projects designed to improve the public's experience with public benefits:

USAGov's Benefits Finder

Information on government benefits and services is typically agency centered, rather than human centered. 10x invested in building a tool to help the public easily identify the benefits they might be eligible for. Formerly known as BEARS, you can read more about our investment in the Benefits Eligibility Awareness Resource Service project or explore Benefits Finder at USA.gov.

Benefits.gov discovery

In collaboration with DOL, OMB and USA.gov, the 10x team led a discovery effort to develop a notional roadmap for a "Federal Front Door" where customers can locate actionable information on the benefits, services, and programs the federal government offers.

Benefits eligibility APIs

America’s social safety net programs, like Headstart and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), are mostly funded by the federal government, but administered by state and local governments. 10x looked at how to make collaboration between systems easier to improve efficiency and get benefits to people faster.

Notify.gov

Notifications, especially text messages, are uniquely effective ways to communicate and can be especially useful in helping people to navigate the benefits space. By providing text alerts for eligibility status, application due dates, and fraud detection, we can help eligible users access federal benefits. Find out more about the beta version of the Notify service or read about the Government Notification Services 10x project.

Secure storage for eligibility documents

Social safety net programs require people to prove their eligibility for benefits with extensive documentation. Tracking and gathering these documents can be confusing and burdensome for benefits applicants, especially during times of financial or other hardship. 10x is looking into ways to make this process easier and more secure.

Find out more:

Trust will be key for U.S. Notify — a federal text message service for state benefits
May 2, 2023
GSA's Public Benefits Studio is building a new text messaging service to help states more effectively communicate with benefits recipients.

Collaborate with the new TTS Public Benefits Studio
February 8, 2023
TTS's new Public Benefits Studio is building on 10x's U.S. Notify to develop a service to use text messaging to help people access and keep the benefits they are eligible for.

Helping people discover benefits with the new BEARS locator
August 30, 2022
BEARS is now available to the public. We continue to look for ways to improve it.

Creating a new way for people to discover government benefits
March 15, 2022
10x and USAGov are collaborating on building a new tool to help make it easier for people to find federal benefits.

Disclaimer: Links to nongovernment sources are made for educational or source citation purposes only, and do not represent an endorsement of the organizations by the General Services Administration. The General Services Administration does not assume any responsibility for the content, operation, or policies of other entities' websites.

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