Nava

For the past two years, I had the immense privilege of working with the Office of Unemployment Insurance Modernization at the United States Department of Labor (USDOL) alongside my incredible team of Nava designers, communications experts, and engineers. This was my first initiative in the civic technology space, after starting my career working in Big Tech, and it was an incredible learning experience. I got to work alongside folks who’ve spent their entire careers advocating for labor rights, and who’ve been in the trenches of government agencies for decades, tirelessly working to provide people access to unemployment benefits. Now that the work has come to a close, here are a couple highlights: 1. We delivered both an in-person and virtual convening at USDOL for over 100 stakeholders from the unemployment insurance (UI) ecosystem to discuss the future of UI from a systems change perspective. https://lnkd.in/gQ5s8pUn 2. We created a series of recommendations for states on the UI claimant experience based on extensive research, which included a pilot usability study alongside interviews with experts from USDOL, state workforce agencies, legal advocates, and UI technologists. https://lnkd.in/gTZVnh8y Thank you to all of the amazing people who partnered with me on this journey. It was particularly gratifying to meet some of you in person in Washington DC after so much time spent working together virtually. While I’ll be working on other benefit programs outside of the UI space for now, the world of civic tech is small, and so I hope we will cross paths again soon.

In case you missed it, the Nava Labs team recently held our second, virtual #DemoDay exploring how #AI might be used to support access to public benefits. We shared our current takeaways based on the AI-enabled prototypes we tested including assistive chatbots, automated case note summaries, and more. Check out the recording to learn more: https://lnkd.in/gpn5EY8p   Sign up for Nava's email newsletter to learn about future events: https://lnkd.in/ePkVtzGM   #CivicTech #GovTech Nava Labs is a new division within Nava PBC -- philanthropically funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Google.org -- and focused on prototyping policy and systems changes within government programs and advocating for their adoption. This interdisciplinary team leverages Nava’s deep delivery experience to identify critical wedges where philanthropy can add velocity to public interest projects and build more trustworthy public institutions.

We’re excited to share a newly published case study from our Nava Labs team! The study focuses on current experiments that illustrate potential use cases for #AI to increase access to public benefits by reducing burdens for benefits navigators (ie: case workers, call center specialists, etc). One such experiment involved using an AI-powered tool to summarize call notes between applicants and navigators, and providing applicants with written next steps post-call. This has the potential to not only improve the experience of applying for benefits, but free up time for navigators, and increase the accuracy of call records for future reference and quality assurance. We tested this idea by prompting different #LLMs using a set template with specific guidelines, and trying several different summarizing techniques (stuffing, chunking, and refinement) to determine what worked the best. Check out the case study to review our findings from this and other AI experiments: https://lnkd.in/geJjcg6j   You can also watch our recent presentation on this work:  https://lnkd.in/gPQA335K 

It’s #ToolkitTuesday, and this week we’re excited to bring you the third in our “power your mission” series: how to engage users and iterate. In this toolkit, you’ll learn the value of “building with, not for” users, as well as user research tips in order to gain valuable, real-time feedback. If you’re working on a human-centered technology project, take a step back and think about how user research could help you understand the participant or staff experience better. What do you want to learn from your users? Who do you need to talk to? Where can you find them? Try mapping these out in a similar fashion to the diagram below. Additionally, remember to start small. Building everything in a technology project all at once is expensive and messy — and you lose the opportunity to engage users. If you start small instead, you can quickly, cheaply, and safely test your idea with real people to see what’s working and what’s not. Iterating is about embracing feedback and learning at every stage of the process. Check out the toolkit for more on building to meet user needs: https://lnkd.in/dWzHqQSz #CivicTech #GovTech #HumanCenteredDesign This toolkit is the third of four that will walk you through human-centered and agile processes to help you achieve meaningful program outcomes with every new technology project. These toolkits were developed with the WIC Technology Resource Group, a resource and learning partnership between the National WIC Association and Nava, with contributions from Code for America.

Did you miss our recent #DemoDay presentation? The Nava Labs team did an incredible job sharing current research on how #AI might be used to support access to public benefits. Check out the recording to learn more: https://lnkd.in/gpn5EY8p #CivicTech #GovTech

Last chance to register for our #DemoDay! Tomorrow (July 10, 1:30-2:30 p.m. EDT), the Nava Labs team will discuss our work exploring how #AI might be used to support access to public benefits. Team members including Diana Griffin, Kevin Boyer, and Charlie Cheng will present the prototypes we tested—from assistive chatbots to automated case note summaries—and what we learned from each experiment. Don’t miss tomorrow’s virtual event! Register here: https://lnkd.in/gPQA335K   #CivicTech #GovTech

It’s #ToolkitTuesday, and this week we’re pleased to bring you the second in our “power your mission” series: how to build technology. This toolkit focuses on how to build modular software systems that will give you the flexibility to meet evolving consumer needs. So how does one do so? There are a handful of approaches you can take given your starting point. If you’re beginning with a monolith and want to break it down into modules, you may use a "decomposition" approach. That said, if you’re building from the ground up you can design modules from the start of your technology project. Either way, applying the concepts of modularity outlined in this toolkit will help you achieve meaningful program outcomes. Take for example an application for a WIC program. One simple, hypothetical way of breaking down the program into modules is to break parts of your program up into boxes [i.e. “Application”, “Eligibility”,  “Nutrition Risk”] and connect them to other components as shown in the diagram. For more details and tips on how to set your project up for success, check out the full toolkit here: https://lnkd.in/gSffRVga This toolkit is the second of four that will walk you through human-centered and agile processes to help you achieve meaningful program outcomes with every new technology project. These toolkits were developed with the WIC Technology Resource Group, a resource and learning partnership between the National WIC Association and Nava, with contributions from Code for America.

Nava is #hiring! We are looking for a Project Manager to join our delivery team. In this role, you’ll manage the support of a mid-large scale product, working closely with our engineers, designers and government partners to triage issues and distill them into clear, actionable tickets for the team. If you have project management experience in a complex software development environment with multiple stakeholders, we’d love to hear from you! Some additional desired skills include having worked in a state or federal government context, and on iterative projects using prototypes, product pilots, and user research. Learn more about this and other roles currently available: https://lnkd.in/gHEDcQq4 #CivicTech #GovTech #Jobs #Engineering

Nava is #hiring! We are looking for a Software Engineer (#FHIR), to join our engineering team. Are you a mid-level engineer with experience developing software in a team environment? Do you have strong experience in the healthcare industry and know FHIR well?  In this role, you will design, review, and build well-crafted software, as well as collaborate with government partners and other contractors to architect, implement, and deploy new systems and improve existing systems to meet user needs. Apply today: https://lnkd.in/gw3mDY7a   #CivicTech #GovTech #Jobs #Engineering

Register for our second #DemoDay on July 10 from 1:30-2:30 p.m. EDT: https://lnkd.in/gPQA335K Join us virtually as our team shares early experiments on applying #AI and automation to support staff such as caseworkers, call-center specialists, community health workers, and others as they help families enroll in public assistance programs. Together with our partners, we are piloting and testing a tool with the goal of supporting staff while learning how we can ethically use AI to expand access to public benefits. Learn more and sign up now so you don’t miss it! #CivicTech #GovTech