Our firms helps governments, organizations on the local and national scale, the civic and private sector, reduce legal and administrative barriers that keep people from receiving public benefits and services.
Designing benefits access around the people served
Applications, renewals and repeated requests for documents can prevent eligible people from receiving help. We work with nonprofits, service providers and policy coalitions on proposals to simplify those processes while protecting privacy and preserving meaningful review of decisions.
Policy engagements can address eligibility screening, enrollment and renewal, notices, consent, authorized data sharing and coordination across programs. Depending on the project, the relevant programs may include SNAP, Medicaid, housing assistance, child care or other human services.
A record in benefits access
Ben Kallos introduced the legislation enacted as New York City Local Law 60 of 2018. The law required a study of using administrative data to identify people who might qualify for benefits and notify them of potential eligibility. The City’s resulting report examined opportunities to improve access across agencies.
He later worked in the Executive Office of the President on efforts to make social safety-net services easier to access, including federal data sharing. This combination of legislative and implementation experience informs the firm’s public benefits policy work.
Moving from a proposal to an operating process
We can research the legal basis for data use, draft legislation and agency comments, analyze proposed information-sharing arrangements and prepare implementation recommendations. We also help organizations document where a process breaks down and develop a policy response grounded in the experiences of the people they serve.
An engagement begins with the program, the administrative barrier and the institution that can change it. We then identify which legal, operational and funding questions must be resolved.