Overview

Federal policymakers have urged the use of human-centered design to reduce administrative burdens in policy implementation. In this study we describe the potential of human-centered design principles to identify burdens, reducing the effects of what we label as administrative checkpoints. Administrative checkpoints—mandatory requirements that must be satisfied in order to progress in an administrative process—have disproportionate negative effects in excluding the public from receiving public services. Mandatory interviews are one such checkpoint.

Based on consultation with safety net clients and caseworkers, we designed a field experiment (N=1,554) to minimize the exclusionary effects of mandatory interviews for SNAP applicants. Compared to a control group that received a traditional mailer reminder, SNAP applicants who also received texts reminding them of the interview and communicating flexible “interview anytime” scheduling options had a higher interview completion rate by 10 percentage points, a higher approval rate by 6 to 7 percentage points, and also completed interviews sooner. Post experiment surveys show that the text reduced learning costs about the interview requirement. 

Approach

First, we seek to more directly connect human-centered design with the practice of policy implementation.

Human-centered design is growing in influence in government, even as it remains a rarity within both the research and teaching aspects of schools of public policy and administration. 

Second, we contribute to the “second-generation” of administrative burden theorizing, one which makes legible problems and potential solutions to the experience of burdens (Moynihan et al., 2022).

We do this first by developing the concept of administrative checkpoints - mandatory administrative requirements without which an individual cannot proceed in an administrative process. Administrative checkpoints are common (e.g., submission deadlines, voter registration deadlines). Our empirical work illustrates how human-centered design helps to identify and minimize the negative effects of administrative checkpoints. Directing both scholarly and practical attention to administrative checkpoints can generate outsized benefits when it comes to making public programs more accessible. 

Third, we offer empirical evidence on the effects of mandatory interviews as an administrative checkpoint, and the value of communicating flexibilities around those interviews.

Missed interviews are a key reason why individuals fail to access benefits, or churn on and off programs (Homonoff & Somerville, 2021). We test if making interviews easier to access increases interview completion and program take-up. We find that communicating a recently adopted flexible interview process both saved client time, and increased approval rates for SNAP benefits. Compared to a control group that received a traditional mailer reminder, SNAP applicants that also received texts reminding them of the interview and communicating flexible “interview anytime” scheduling options had a higher interview completion rate by 10 percentage points, a higher SNAP approval rate by 6 to 7 percentage points, and also completed interviews sooner. The results closely mirror a similar experiment in Los Angeles (Giannella et al., 2024). 

Funder: Code for America