Ariel Kennan and the Digital Benefits Network create new partnerships and projects to put beneficiaries first
Ariel Kennan has always wanted systems to work for all—and that is the goal she has prioritized as the senior director of the Digital Benefits Network (DBN) at the Beeck Center for Social Impact + Innovation at Georgetown University.
Since 2021, Kennan has been leading the Beeck Center’s efforts to help solve some of the most pressing challenges facing digital access and delivery of public benefits, with the ultimate goal of creating more economic opportunity across the country. Now, as the DBN continues to expand to new spaces, add more staff, and forge new partnerships the team has reflected on their work to chart a path for the future.
“We’re really thinking through what’s worked,” Kennan said. “What are plays and activities that we’ve been applying in one space … that we might want to replicate or focus in a particular area?”
The team has experimented with research and engagement focused on specific benefits programs, such as Unemployment Insurance or Medicaid, but has found unique success in working on broader systems-wide initiatives, such as the impacts and possibilities for delivery in technologies such as digital identity and Rules as Code.
The community behind this work will come together during the DBN’s second-annual Digital Benefits Conference (BenCon), September 17-18, in Washington, DC. Hundreds of government leaders, cross-sector practitioners, researchers, and students who are improving digital delivery of vital programs will explore core topics such as artificial intelligence (AI), digital identity, customer experience and more as they navigate accessible, effective, and equitable technology in public benefits. The event will shed light on the moment we’re in—socially, politically, and technologically—to continue to chart the course to excellence in digital benefits delivery.
In Kennan’s eyes, one of the most considerable challenges to overcome in achieving that goal and delivering benefits equitably and efficiently is state capacity.
“Do the states have the funding? First and foremost, to make the design and digital transformation, to be honest, that’s required,” Kennan said.
The leadership, however, is there, according to Kennan. Across the country, state leaders are prioritizing improved access to digital benefits and are open to new collaborations and partnerships to advance these efforts. Much of this knowledge sharing and community building is thanks in large part to the DBN’s community of practice and the repository of open-source resources they have compiled, organized, and maintained in the Digital Benefits Hub, which launched in 2022. In October, the Digital Benefits Hub will be upgraded and expanded as the Digital Government Hub, an open-source reference library for anyone working to improve digital access to government services.
For Kennan and the DBN, not only is it important that the digital systems work, but that they work equitably for everyone. Throughout Kennan’s time in design and government, she thinks that the “mindset has really changed” to put accessibility and equity at the center of digital service delivery.
“I joined government a decade ago, and it was revolutionary to talk about human-centered design and service design,” Kennan said. “And now we have lots of people talking about it and many designers working in government.”
During her time at the New York City Mayor’s Office for Economic Opportunity, she built out a team of product and design experts to staff the Service Design Studio, which works across agencies to advance the City’s use of human-centered design methods. In 2018, she pivoted to the private sector, working at Sidewalk Labs as a part of the social infrastructure team on proactive planning for neighborhoods and communities.
Then, in 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic hit, acting as a turning point both in Kennan’s career and in the mindset for digital benefits. Living in the epicenter of the pandemic in New York City, Kennan felt called back to public service.
“I felt tremendous guilt to not be in government anymore,” Kennan said. “It was a scary and weird time, but also an incredible moment of community solidarity, with a lot of community aid and assistance and just the community filling gaps that government wasn’t delivering on, while government was also moving mountains to try to get people assistance.”
Kennan joined Beeck in early 2021, hoping to harness the momentum in the digital benefits space from the pandemic into creating more equitable and long lasting solutions as a partner to government. Kennan recalls joining Beeck at the time when other exciting new initiatives to deliver benefits were being implemented, such as President Biden’s American Rescue Plan and new philanthropic efforts and investments in the digital benefits space.
Despite this new momentum, however, she worried that it could dissipate as fast as it started. “Is this a moment in time, and then we’re going to be on to the next crisis or thing that calls people’s attention, and move on from this?” Kennan asked.
But for Kennan, this concern should not downplay the incredible work to improve these benefits systems, nor should it lead to a complacency that stops future work.
“The bigger, incredible thing is that the US government helped a lot of people … and I think that needs to be one of the things that’s really remembered,” Kennan said. “There will be some other big economic shock in the future … and something I am very worried about is, have we done enough to really repair some of these systems and continue to invest in them so that they’re actually ready to go?”
One current project Kennan is especially excited about is the DBN’s research collaboration with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT) to create voluntary resources for public sector organizations that administer public benefits as they consider the use of digital identity solutions. Digital authentication and identity verification has faced a number of challenges, including issues of cybersecurity, equity, usability, and access. Finding a balance between these needs is vital for benefits to become more accessible and equitable, according to Kennan.
“We really need to be thinking about identity as part of the overall service journey,” Kennan said. “If we can get it to work well, we can actually do better service delivery.”
Over the next two years, the NIST, DBN, and CDT team will speak directly with a variety of stakeholders, including governments, nonprofits, think tanks, and beneficiaries to understand the main challenges and solutions for digital identity in public benefits
Overall, Kennan hopes this project will stop states from making blanket choices on digital identity without considering how these choices will directly impact beneficiaries, and instead offer resources states can use to improve access and equity. This starts with government better understanding residents, and what people are easily able and willing to do in order to receive benefits, according to Kennan.
Kennan and the DBN have also been tackling the challenge of Rules as Code, or the translation of legislation and policy into machine-readable code. The recent rise of generative artificial intelligence (AI) got Kennan thinking about how these new technologies could fit in with Rules as Code work.
“Can generative AI help us save some of the human hours in translation from policy into code and into plain language?” Kennan asked.
That’s the question the DBN’s and Georgetown’s Massive Data Institute’s (MDI) first prototyping challenge “Policy2Code” seeks to answer. The team launched the “Policy2Code” challenge in April, with 14 teams joining from across the U.S. and Canada, including one that is a collaboration between three centers at Georgetown with students, staff, and faculty from the DBN, MDI, and the Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET). Each of the teams shared documentation and open-source code throughout the challenge while also participating in several touch points throughout the summer to share progress. The final demonstrations will be presented at BenCon, afterwhich Kennan, MDI’s Lisa Singh, and affiliated students will be documenting research findings and sharing a set of resources from the prototypes.
“We’re one of the few organizations who’s doing this open, collaborative experimentation on what technology can even do for some of these use cases right now,” Kennan said. “We have gotten incredible traction and we’re very, very happy with the participation.”
This prototype challenge is just one new experiment that the DBN—as well as other Beeck Center teams—are beginning to explore in order to create different forms of impact. For Kennan, “Policy2Code” offers a learning opportunity that shows big impact can come from small teams working at a quick pace.
“Big impact doesn’t always have to be a bigger team, multi-year production,” Kennan said. “How do we figure out how to make some stuff condensed? That’s the real spark in the space: we have to work both speeds and both sizes.”