The People-Centered Digital Benefits Project was launched to document how states are reimagining the delivery of public benefits through both better technology and new approaches to institutional design, capacity, and practice. The project is grounded in the belief that real progress towards people-centered digital benefits delivery depends as much on how agencies are structured and led as on the technology they use. Since last September, we’ve spoken with over a dozen leaders across four states leading the charge on people-centered digital benefits delivery.
In each case, the most impactful investments were not in platforms or contracts, but in skilled professionals who had the influence and expertise to drive real change.
Across Four States, the Most Consequential Investments Were in People
People-centered benefits delivery means designing systems that meet families where they are, adapt responsively to changing needs, and are built on strong public-sector capacity, ensuring access is fast, fair, and dignified for all. Across states, we documented a range of approaches that made people-centered benefits delivery possible. Each case study offers its own lessons about co-design, governance, procurement, and the organizational conditions that allow this work to take root and grow. Through all these lessons, one finding holds true for all four: they invested in putting the right people, with the right expertise, in the right positions, and giving them real authority to lead.
That investment didn’t require large teams or new agencies. It took different forms.
- In Massachusetts, a central digital service team multiplied its impact by embedding alongside agencies to help them hire, train, and sustain their own in-house design and research capacity.
- In New York, the first Chief Customer Experience Office with a staff of three, housed in the Governor’s office, used that positioning to establish shared customer experience goals across more than 100 agencies and convene senior leaders to track progress against them.
- In Maryland, a shared platform and governance structure that already existed across agencies made it possible to integrate six programs into a single application without building new infrastructure from scratch.
- In Colorado, a single Head of Product, reporting directly to executive directors across health and human services, had the authority to redirect the state toward building its eligibility system around the needs of families and county workers rather than the constraints of a vendor contract.
In each case, the scale of the investment mattered far less than the clarity of the mandate and the expertise behind it.
People-Centered Delivery Requires Public Leadership
As our case studies make clear, people-centered benefits delivery can’t be fully outsourced. You can contract for engineering or procure a platform, but the work that makes a benefits system truly people-centered requires people inside government who—unlike vendors—are accountable to the people they serve. When government officials have real authority and they hear that something isn’t working, they have both the incentive and the standing to fix it.
Technology vendors can be critical state partners, but partnerships are only effective when the state has the internal expertise to define what success looks like, evaluate whether it is being achieved, and push back when it isn’t. A vendor can be contracted to build, implement, and maintain complex technical systems, but if decisions about what that success looks like sit largely with the vendor, the state has no independent basis for knowing whether the system is actually serving families well.
Most critically, strategic direction has to be owned by the state. A vendor’s roadmap will always be shaped by what is profitable to build, what is feasible within the contract, and what protects the relationship. Those incentives are not always misaligned with families’ best interests, but they are not the same as asking what a family applying for food assistance actually needs, or what a caseworker would change first. Without internal technical expertise, states cannot meaningfully challenge a vendor’s priorities or know when they are being told something convenient rather than something true. Decisions about what the system should do, who it should serve, and what success looks like must belong to the public.
As Federal Resources Retreat, State Capacity Matters More
This public capacity has never mattered more than it does now. H.R. 1’s sweeping federal policy changes, including new Medicaid work requirements and tying SNAP dollars to state payment error rates, are forcing states to absorb significant new costs and responsibilities as federal resources retreat. States without internal product and technical expertise are in a difficult position: they depend on vendors to diagnose the problem and name the price, while families absorb the cost of that dependency in delayed benefits, broken applications, and systems that may have never been designed with them in mind.
States that have built this capacity are better positioned to respond to federal changes on their own terms. They can diagnose problems independently, challenge vendor claims with evidence, and make decisions about how to adapt based on what families and frontline workers actually need, rather than what a legacy contract allows. Of course, they are not immune to the same pressures—like federal policy shifts, vendor dependency, and constrained budgets—but they have the skills and capacity to navigate them without ceding control of the outcomes.
The states featured in this series did not wait for new budgets or perfect conditions. They made deliberate choices about who leads the work and the level of authority they have to make improvements. Some redirected existing funds, some hired a single person into a newly created role, and some built agency capacity by training existing staff in user experience research. What they shared was a conviction that this work belongs inside government and the willingness to act on it.
This is the lesson for states that have not yet made that choice. People-centered benefits delivery doesn’t start with technology. It starts with the people inside state governments who have the expertise and authority to ensure that access is fast, fair, and dignified for all.