Letter
from
leadership

Somewhere, right now, a staff member at a state government agency is poring over the minutiae of someone’s claim for benefits. Let’s imagine that person’s claim is approved, so they begin to manage their benefits, using a portal that entire teams worked to build. Stepping back even further, there’s a federal agency overseeing how states administer benefits, providing guidance and resources to promote a healthy benefits ecosystem across the country.

This example illustrates how government functions on every level to deliver essential services to the public. All of these seemingly small touch points — from an individual applying for benefits to a team working on one facet of a government website — sum up to end-to-end benefit delivery systems, like a state unemployment insurance (UI) program. These delivery systems don’t operate in silos; they comprise ecosystems, like the U.S. UI system. Successes at any level of government contribute to the success of the ecosystem, and the ecosystem’s successes contribute to positive outcomes for people. 

At Nava, we know we have to focus our efforts at every level of service delivery in order to catalyze change. This is something we’ve learned from nearly a decade partnering with civil servants, from doing deep technical work to human-centered systems integration. Our Public Benefit Report highlights those efforts, from the micro to the macro, and how they’re all interconnected. 

This year, we honed details, like an icon that indicates birthing-friendly hospitals on Medicare.gov, because we know they can have outsized impacts, like reducing the U.S. maternal mortality rate. We thought about these details in the context of end-to-end service delivery, like when we helped the State of New Jersey UI build and optimize an application programming interface (API) that was essential to launching the state’s new claimant portal. Sometimes we zoomed out even further; we began working across multiple state paid leave programs and continued our longstanding partnership with the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ paid family and medical leave (PFML) program. We’re proud of these efforts and look forward to supporting a thriving paid leave ecosystem.

Nava has grown and our portfolio is broader than it has ever been. But rather than dilute our focus, this growth has sharpened our ability to support interconnected efforts across the country. Our experience at the federal level, for example, can help us support a state navigating compliance, while our experience at the state level can inform new federal playbooks and practices. Through it all, our goal is to support positive ecosystems with direct action.

It takes work and we sweat the details. But when we step back and remember that our work outlasts election and funding cycles, we recommit to the civil servants we’ve had the privilege to work with, the programs they hold a deep conviction for, and the millions of people across the country that we serve.