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Public Benefit Report2024

Improving end-to-end service delivery

To provide excellent government experiences, public interest technologists must focus on improving every step of service delivery.

Illustration of a diverse group of seven people at a community center. In the foreground, a Middle Eastern woman wearing a hijab holds a cup of tea. To the left, there’s a middle-aged South Asian man with a beard who wears a turban and glasses. He sits next to a young woman with light skin and long hair. A young child with medium skin tone stands in front of them. In the background, a young Asian man with glasses stands next to a middle-aged Black woman with braided hair. A white man wearing a hearing aid sits next to them and holds a cup of coffee.

  • Delivering a human-centered unemployment insurance portal for New Jersey

    The New Jersey Department of Labor & Workforce Development (NJDOL) tapped Nava to help build a modern, flexible, and resilient end-to-end unemployment insurance (UI) system. Our work included helping New Jersey build a self-service claimant portal that reduces barriers to accessing benefits and an application programming interface (API) that connects the claimant-facing portal to the staff-facing back end.

    Claimants can use the portal’s intake application to apply for benefits. It’s intuitive, allows people to apply in fewer steps than the legacy application, lets people save and finish their application later, and is accessible on all devices. The homepage enables people to manage their benefits and learn about the status of their claim. Most importantly, the API we helped build connects the front-end intake application to the portal back end so agency staff can easily access claimant data and adjudicate claims.

    We used an iterative development approach to de-risk the portal. This means we directed a higher percentage of claimants to the new portal with each launch, enabling us to triage and prioritize issues in between launches. Our agile methodology helped NJDOL quickly deliver value to claimants by frequently releasing new features. 

    This work was born out of the U.S. Department of Labor’s (the Department) effort to help states modernize their UI programs after the pandemic exposed shortcomings in our country’s UI system. As part of this effort, the Department partnered with New Jersey on strategic modernization projects, including the new claimant portal. 

    To learn more, read our case study.

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    New Jersey Office of Innovation, Unemployment Insurance Application Redesign

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    Building an intuitive and human-centered UI claimant portal is helping New Jerseyans get critical benefits during times of financial stress.

    Illustration of a young, Asian man who wears glasses. He holds a resume and stands in front of a storefront with a Now Hiring sign in the window.
    Illustration of a diverse group of seven people at a community center. In the foreground, a Middle Eastern woman wearing a hijab holds a cup of tea. To the left, there’s a middle-aged South Asian man with a beard who wears a turban and glasses. He sits next to a young woman with light skin and long hair. A young child with medium skin tone stands in front of them. In the background, a young Asian man with glasses stands next to a middle-aged Black woman with braided hair. A white man wearing a hearing aid sits next to them and holds a cup of coffee.

  • Building a flexible paid family and medical leave program with API technology

    Since 2020, Nava has worked with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts to help build and maintain the state’s first-ever paid family and medical leave (PFML) program. As a part of our work, we helped Massachusetts develop the Paid Leave application programming interface (API) and a back-end API layer that enables several different state systems to communicate with the PFML website and with one another. As a result, the state’s PFML program is more flexible, resilient, and human-centered.

    By working iteratively alongside Massachusetts and other vendors, we were able to ensure the API layer meets stakeholders needs as the program matures. With the API layer, Massachusetts can easily adapt new tools and workflows based on the changing needs of the agency and its constituents. The API layer has helped reduce administrative burdens for agency staff, promoting faster claims decisions and more timely payment of benefits. And finally, the API layer transmits data that agency staff can use to continuously improve on the program.

    We continue to help Massachusetts iterate on the API layer to meet these evolving needs, fostering increased trust and a more equitable service.

    To learn more, read our case study.

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    Commonwealth of Massachusetts Department of Family and Medical Leave 2023 Annual Report

    Image caption

    The API layer we built with Massachusetts PFML helps people receive benefits quicker, allowing them to focus on major life events.

    Illustration of a South Asian man with a beard who wears a turban and glasses. He sits at the bedside of his aging mother in a hospital. She wears glasses and they hold hands.
    Illustration of a diverse group of seven people at a community center. In the foreground, a Middle Eastern woman wearing a hijab holds a cup of tea. To the left, there’s a middle-aged South Asian man with a beard who wears a turban and glasses. He sits next to a young woman with light skin and long hair. A young child with medium skin tone stands in front of them. In the background, a young Asian man with glasses stands next to a middle-aged Black woman with braided hair. A white man wearing a hearing aid sits next to them and holds a cup of coffee.

  • Using modern technology for a human-centered Medicaid unwinding

    Starting last year, Medicaid cuts occurred on a national scale — at least 25 million people were disenrolled from Medicaid between March 2023 and September 2024. Nearly 70% of these people lost coverage for procedural reasons, which often occurs because a state has outdated contact information for the beneficiary, or because the beneficiary doesn’t know how to renew their coverage. This year, Nava wrote about how we believe human-centered technology can prevent some of these procedural disenrollments by making it easier for people to renew coverage, while modern data practices can help states obtain the necessary information to automatically recertify eligible beneficiaries.

    Ideally, states could determine someone’s eligibility for Medicaid through existing data sources. However, states were only able to complete 61% of enrollment checks that way, forcing them to rely on a more manual, time-consuming process for the remaining beneficiaries. Data sharing could help reduce this administrative burden. By prioritizing cloud-based data infrastructure and interoperability with application programming interfaces (APIs), states can make data more accessible and useful. 

    Plain-language web applications that focus on accessibility and equity can also help people retain coverage while reducing Medicaid call center volumes. When building such applications, states should release prototypes in small bites to minimize risk and gather feedback through user research. This will ensure the technology works for those who need it.

    Finally, states should pair any modernization strategy with robust communications that notify beneficiaries of the unwinding. It may also be useful to conduct usability testing to ensure that communications are helpful for beneficiaries. This will prevent people from losing coverage simply because they’re unaware of the unwinding. 

    To learn more, read our insight article. 

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    KFF, Medicaid Enrollment and Unwinding Tracker

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    We believe that human-centered technology and proactive communications can help notify people when they need to renew their Medicaid coverage, preventing erroneous coverage loss.

    Illustration of a white man who wears a hearing aid. He sits at a computer and fills out a form online.
    Illustration of a diverse group of seven people at a community center. In the foreground, a Middle Eastern woman wearing a hijab holds a cup of tea. To the left, there’s a middle-aged South Asian man with a beard who wears a turban and glasses. He sits next to a young woman with light skin and long hair. A young child with medium skin tone stands in front of them. In the background, a young Asian man with glasses stands next to a middle-aged Black woman with braided hair. A white man wearing a hearing aid sits next to them and holds a cup of coffee.

  • Empowering Department of Justice staff with human-centered tools

    In partnership with the Department of Justice (DOJ) Civil Rights Division, Nava is working to improve and maintain the agency’s complaint intake portal, which makes reporting a violation more accessible to the general public. As part of our work with DOJ, we implemented several human-centered tools to improve the agency staff experience with the portal.

    DOJ staff use the intake portal to prioritize actionable complaints and provide remedies for civil rights violations. Therefore, it’s crucial DOJ staff have the tools to do this essential job well. 

    We met continuously with DOJ staff to better understand their processes and workflows, which informed what tools we built. Based on our insights from these meetings, we helped DOJ build tools that enable staff to identify patterns among complaints and develop more efficient workflows. 

    We also worked with DOJ to optimize educational content on the civil rights portal that informs people of their rights, how to use the portal, and to which agency they should send their complaint. DOJ built these tools within their existing technological infrastructure, enabling the agency to improve user and staff experiences without having to invest in costly technology solutions.

    To learn more, read our case study.

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    General Services Administration Digital Analytics Program, U.S. Federal Government websites analytics

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    U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, FY 2022 Performance Budget

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    We’re helping DOJ build tools that enable agency staff to identify patterns among civil rights complaints.

    Illustration of a middle-aged, Black woman with braided hair. She presents a set of graphs to a group of people in an office.
    Illustration of a diverse group of seven people at a community center. In the foreground, a Middle Eastern woman wearing a hijab holds a cup of tea. To the left, there’s a middle-aged South Asian man with a beard who wears a turban and glasses. He sits next to a young woman with light skin and long hair. A young child with medium skin tone stands in front of them. In the background, a young Asian man with glasses stands next to a middle-aged Black woman with braided hair. A white man wearing a hearing aid sits next to them and holds a cup of coffee.

  • Strengthening response readiness with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s ReportStream

    The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) ReportStream helps State, Tribal, Local, and Territorial Health Departments quickly receive disease test result data from testing sites, for their jurisdiction, enabling them to make well-informed decisions that keep our communities safe and healthy. We partnered with CDC to operate and expand ReportStream, promoting a public health ecosystem that’s flexible and resilient in the face of disease outbreaks.

    ReportStream was born out of the need to quickly deliver lab data on COVID-19 test results to public health departments during the pandemic. As the technology evolves post-public health emergency, CDC’s main goal with ReportStream is response readiness. This means equipping public health departments with the data they need to make informed decisions during outbreaks of any disease. 

    All of our work on this project has been in service of response readiness. This included helping CDC prepare for outbreaks of conditions that are new to ReportStream, expanding ReportStream’s sender and receiver base, and streamlining how CDC’s infectious disease labs share data with state public health departments.

    To learn more, read our case study.

    Image caption

    We’re helping CDC expand ReportStream, which makes it easier for disease testing sites to send disease test result data to public health departments.

    Illustration of a Middle Eastern woman who wears a hijab. She is looking through a microscope in a lab. There are Petri dishes and test tubes on the lab table.
    Illustration of a diverse group of seven people at a community center. In the foreground, a Middle Eastern woman wearing a hijab holds a cup of tea. To the left, there’s a middle-aged South Asian man with a beard who wears a turban and glasses. He sits next to a young woman with light skin and long hair. A young child with medium skin tone stands in front of them. In the background, a young Asian man with glasses stands next to a middle-aged Black woman with braided hair. A white man wearing a hearing aid sits next to them and holds a cup of coffee.
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