How Many People Does It Take for the Government to Send a Text?

Genevieve Miller is a perfect Zoom emcee. The program manager at Code for America begins each meeting with a perky welcome and an icebreaker. To kick off a collaboration between her nonprofit and the Connecticut Department of Social Services last July, she threw out some trivia: Connecticut’s state animal is the sperm whale. Its nickname is the Nutmeg State. A New Haven restaurant is credited with inventing the hamburger. The Pez factory is located in Orange. That last factoid prompted CfA staffers to add a visit to an upcoming research trip where they’d be talking to food stamp recipients and DSS employees throughout the state.

The partnership was to allow the state to text residents enrolled in the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which provides food stamps to people below a certain income and asset threshold. The first step would be a limited pilot for sending renewal reminders to SNAP recipients—the paperwork must be resubmitted by mail or online every six months if the recipient isn’t elderly or disabled. In a study of six states published in 2014, the US Department of Agriculture found that 17% to 28% of SNAP recipients lost their benefits because of paperwork issues at some point each year, the vast majority when they have to recertify. CfA projected that, if the pilot proved successful, they could help as many as 135,000 Connecticut residents over five years keep their food stamps. They’d also be able to adopt texting for other purposes, and, ultimately, they hoped to completely overhaul how Connecticut residents apply for benefits.