Income verification

[stvnrlly]

Context

All means tested benefits programs have an income verification step during application processing and renewal. A product could facilitate integrations with income/employment data sets to provide up-to-date income data and potentially propose formulas for likelihood of continued eligibility by using historical data, thereby reducing the burden of verification on applicants themselves.

Currently, each administering agency (usually at the state level) negotiates their own contract with an income verification provider. We believe there is an opportunity for TTS to:

• help reduce cost by becoming a service provider (requiring data sharing agreements) or negotiating a more favorable contract with the main provider in the space for use by other agencies
• improve data quality by integrating new data sets
• propose better formulas for determining/predicting eligibility based on income
• reduce burden on applicants who are currently required to provide evidence of current income

Why we're prioritizing this

• This is a cross-agency need that would benefit from a cross-agency approach rather than leaving it at the (often) state and local / program level. Agencies, even at the federal level, are unlikely to take this on themselves.
• if we’re successful with income verification, this could create an opportunity to expand to other types of data-sharing to minimize applicant burden, potentially even exploring automating enrollment based on existing government data (vs requiring applicants to proactively apply).

Relevant references:

• Related work: 18F SNAP IV Path Analysis (Mike Gintz, Kevin Mori, Nick Jones)
• Related work: 10x Rules as Code / Elig APIs (Mike Gintz, Alex Soble)
• Related work: Login + Identity verification
• Related work: 18F + FNS NAC project (Skippy Williams, Julia Lindpaintner, Michael King, Eleni Chappen)

Product canvas

https://app.mural.co/t/gsa6/m/gsa6/1639534290762/a99918dc3b92c457ee62b765ca1a9c25c33f6e5b

Where the current work its already happening

• 🔒 project channel on TTS Slack
• 🔒 project Drive folder

[nick-jones-gov]

👋 saw that our Income Verification work was mentioned here, we've been working on very similar questions the last 3 months and would be happy to talk any time + share our final report when it's ready in January!

As another point of reference / prior research, this GAO report, titled "Federal Low-Income Programs:
Use of Data to Verify Eligibility Varies Among Selected Programs and Opportunities Exist to Promote Additional Use", provided a lot of helpful context on the problem space for us.

[hartsick]

Elyse and I took a review of the canvas and felt like it was in good shape for now! We think it would be worth revisiting when the IV report is ready in January.

[nick-jones-gov]

Our income verification report is done / ready! Let us know if it would be helpful to talk about it in any more detail / live, we'd be happy to do so!

[amyashida]

A lose reflection based off of the IV report - the product canvas should be updated accordingly:

• If this concept moves forward it should likely pivot from building a shared service to looking at how TTS could facilitate shared agreements/contracts/policies/best practices across state and federal agencies. The cross-program nature of IV still supports GSA's involvement. It is unclear to me if the Studio is the best group to help maintain momentum here or if there is a better option within GSA/TTS/other agencies.
• Hubs are referenced in Recommendation 7 of the report and supporting the development of Hubs could be one way to approach the above. This work is likely highly consultative in nature and may not be highly scalable. This is something for the Studio team to weigh as it defines what role it wants to play within the both TTS ecosystem and the PB ecosystem.