Pandemic EBT, which provided critical support to families during summers, was shown to reduce food insecurity among households with children by 17 percent. With that in mind, it was extremely exciting to see 44 states, tribes, and territories express an intent to launch permanent Summer EBT programs this coming summer, which will in essence continue the spirit of that program. Summer EBT – and this type of impact – could not come at a more opportune moment given that 1 million more households with children experience food insecurity relative to past years.
When considering how best to minimize the administrative burden on families, the intent of this policy as designed is quite thoughtful. Summer EBT requires states to automatically enroll a significant number of children that includes those participating in certain public benefits programs, those participating in Head Start or with homeless, foster, migrant, or runaway status, and those who have already filled out a school meals application. It additionally requires states to provide a separate application pathway in the event children may be eligible but don’t meet those automatic eligibility criteria. (For more details, I recommend the unbelievably thorough and helpful playbook put together by Code for America and Share Our Strength.)
Unfortunately, even the most intentionally designed policies don’t always translate into effective implementation – and not necessarily for lack of trying. In Recoding America, Jennifer Pahlka thankfully pushed into the national consciousness an awareness of why nuanced factors related to government team composition and culture, procurement, and stacked rules regimes doom so many technological transformation efforts.
In the case of Summer EBT, the reasons for imminent concern may in some ways be even simpler: time and staffing resources to execute.
All across the country, state agencies responsible for processing applications for food assistance are having to do more with less. Many states across the country – both Red and Blue – are multiple months behind in processing applications for SNAP. Dave Guarino recently wrote a tremendous article detailing SNAP backlogs across the country and some concrete actions that might be taken to address it. Within his article, he cites the unbelievable human cost that staffing shortages are posing to the hardworking case workers trying to process unprecedented levels of applications – with practitioners experiencing devastating burnout to the point of crying in their cars.
As agencies scramble to ensure Summer EBT can provide sorely needed support to families, it will often be the same officials responsible for these overloaded programs that have to make this entirely new program a success.
We see the immense efforts agency staff are making to try to do so.
The Beam, Formerly Edquity team has been fortunate to speak with many officials running like mad to make Summer EBT happen. Even the most prepared states are having to build completely new infrastructure related to data sharing, unification, and deduplication, not just around across benefits programs but also between Departments of Education and Departments of Human Services. And beyond this work, we’ve heard they simply do not have the capacity to take on another application program.
Ensuring that the implementation of this program can be a success would be hard under any circumstance given these conditions. It’s made even harder given that states effectively have four months to do it.
Beam stands ready to assist states as they take on this massive task. Our team has a successful track record supporting data unification and deduplication efforts. Moreover, we are uniquely positioned to quickly stand up new application-enabled programs rapidly with our unified, end-to-end system that supports accessible, multilingual applications, case management and eligibility determination, payment, and real-time reporting.
Beam has also supported multiple programs that mirror the route many states may take in providing Local Education Authorities localized file upload, case management, and eligibility determination capabilities with a rollup global experience for state agencies themselves. Understanding states are doing more with less staff, we also have implemented new capabilities powered by AI to support document tagging and classification, information extraction, and case summarization and automated tasks where appropriate.
Summer EBT offers an amazing promise of helping families avoid food insecurity during summer months. Beam is excited to help make this promise a reality.
