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Roughly 200,000 service members leave the military every year in a process called service member transition. During transition, Veterans must navigate finding employment, education, housing, and healthcare all while re-establishing relationships with loved ones and managing finances. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) offers ample resources from family support to disability compensation to healthcare benefits. But it can be challenging for Veterans to understand how to utilize these resources. That’s why around half of recently separated Veterans don’t leverage their available benefits and resources. VA, along with several other federal agencies, is looking to change that by prototyping a digital solution that provides customized and integrated information on service member transition.
In partnership with Benefits Data Trust (BDT), we’re creating, testing, and piloting an AI-powered tool that may help government agency staff and benefits navigators easily identify which families can enroll in key public benefit programs such as the Special Supplemental Program for Women Infants and Children (WIC), the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and Medicaid. In order to identify use cases for AI-powered tools and opportunities for experimentation, we conducted user research with stakeholders at every level of the benefits application process. We prioritized speaking with diverse populations so that our research would reflect a variety of lived experiences and contribute to technological advancements that promote equity. Our research yielded powerful insights into how AI might be leveraged in the public benefits space. Armed with these insights, we’re conducting a series of human-centered experiments to better understand how AI-powered tools might expand access to public benefits.
In our country, people do not have access to the same opportunities and resources. Factors such as race, ethnicity, socioeconomic class, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, and more can affect everything from getting a job to getting a loan. College admissions are no different, which is why affirmative action was so important to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) in academia. When the Supreme Court upended affirmative action last year, it delivered a major blow to DE&I efforts at colleges and universities. At Nava, we believe our workforce should reflect the diversity of the populations we serve. We also recognize that many people face barriers to entering the professional world based on aspects of their identities. With the end of affirmative action, those barriers have become even higher for many people.
Civic technologists work on government services that impact millions of people every day. For private sector technology workers who want to make a bigger public impact, starting a career in civic tech is a great option. Building public services that are simple, effective, and accessible requires designers, engineers, product managers, and many other tech professionals with experience building human-centered products. At Nava, our employees have done everything from supporting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as they build crucial public health technology to working with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to help beneficiaries get preventive care. Though our work presents unique challenges, it can also be extremely rewarding and fulfilling.
