Voices From the Social Safety Net

Afua Bruce and Justin King wrote for Slate's Future Tense about the use of technology in public benefit systems:

"In February 2018, Brianna LaBelle logged into an app on her smartphone to check the remaining balance of her Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, formerly called food stamps, to plan grocery purchases for her and her two sons. Instead of seeing the amount of money she had to spend on food for the rest of the month, the New York Times reported, LaBelle got a “currently unavailable” message. The outage “lasted for nearly a month, during which she also lost the timesaving and meal-planning convenience of the app.”

What happened? One of the two companies in America contracted to deliver SNAP to debit-esque cards decided to cut off a popular smartphone app, Fresh EBT, that LaBelle and more than 1 million other Americans then used each month. For more than half of the app’s monthly users, Fresh EBT was suddenly almost useless. Instead of using the app to find their balance quickly, people wishing to plan ahead would have to call and successfully navigate a 1-800 number system, adding back in friction they had already worked to remove from their lives."