The USDA's Food and Nutrition Services (FNS) is modernizing an exisitng system (STARS) to improve how retailers become authorized and re-authorize to accept SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) benefits as payment. By reducing the administrative burden of reapplications, FNS seeks to increase the number of retailers who can deliver public benefits to the 36 million low-income Americans who rely on food assistance.
This is an 8-9 week Path Analysis focused on the SNAP Retailer lifecycle, including STARS (Store Tracking and Redemption System), which is the primary form of automated support for SNAP retailer management functions. The task here is to conduct technical and user research to help FNS validate and prioritize a set of process, technical or design improvements to solve user and business problems and help FNS achieve their goals. Following this assessment, 18F will prepare a synthesis of findings as well as preliminary recommendations identifying the next steps towards a potential solution.
During this phase, 18F will provide FNS with the following:
- research, validate and prioritize future improvements
- Strategy, recommendations, and concept
- When appropriate, limited prototypes, wireframes, data, or other documents generated by 18F
Validated problem statements. The partner has provided a list of problem statements, and would like us to help validate them with research. These problem statements were largely generated by the Retailer Policy and Management Division Director (a level above our primary contact, Nicole Budzius). The partner has expressed that they’d like to develop a more user-centered approach.
The partner would like for us to help prioritize those problem statements and help them create a viable roadmap. They have indicated their current prioritization is somewhat reactive—it involves looking at level of effort, relative priority, and “rotating” between stakeholder groups. Partner has expressed interest in learning about more rigorous prioritization frameworks that will help them align with organizational strategic plans.
The partner has said they’d like to “build consensus” across stakeholder groups. This may be an opportunity for coaching on empowered product ownership, working to understand and prioritize user and business needs, and works to gain buy-in from stakeholders.
The partner has expressed interest in a possible follow-on E&I engagement (in fact, the agreement includes an E&I, though funds have not yet been obligated), so recommendations for the next phase of the engagement will be part of the final deliverables. The Agency’s strategic plan says that by the end of the year, they will have defined requirements to streamline the retailer lifecycle process. The goal is to have a path forward.
The project team should develop a project strategy that balances the real and perceived constraints of the partner with known best practices for agile software development.
Due to the administrative burden created by the current system, FNS needs to modernize and streamline their processes for authorizing, reauthorizing, and withdrawing retailers from participation in SNAP. Specifically, FNS is interested in reducing the administrative burden associated with the re-application of retailers (where applicants apply multiple times), increasing FNS’s ability to adapt to change, building in automated workflows, and creating solutions that help users navigate through the application and reauthorization process.
The SNA program’s effectiveness is dependent upon grocers and other retailers enrolling in the SNAP program so that beneficiaries can use SNAP benefits to buy food at their stores. Improving the enrollment experience for these retailers could lower the barrier to participation, and could potentially increase the number and variety of stores where SNAP beneficiaries could buy food (including smaller grocers specializing in fresher, healthier food). Meanwhile, improving the experience for SNAP administrators who use the system in their daily work could potentially free up more of their time to focus on higher-impact tasks and potentially reduce overall program administration costs.
- Alicia Rouault, Product @arouault
- Norah Maki, Strategy @NorahMaki
- Hannah Kane, Account Manager @hannahkane
- Ryan Schreiber
- Nicole Budzius
- Joshline Gounder
- Candyce Polite
- Stand-ups: Daily updates (floating)
- Team Sync: Weekly in hangouts with AM / Meet, 1 hour
- Shipping News: Update document during the week, submit on Fridays. You can
find all the shipping news documents in the
shipping-newsdirectory. - Tracking work: Github Projects (note that since this is an 8 week engagement, we are breaking up our work into 1 week sprints)
- USDA + 18F check ins: Use Webex
- Slack, 18F + USDA: #snap-retailer-partner
- Retrospectives: Bi-weekly, monthly with partner
- Tock #1110 18F / FNS SNAP / Retailer Support
Week 1 |
Week 2-3 |
Week 4-6 |
Week 7-8 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Prep Kickoff | Kickoff & Research | Additional Research & Prototyping & Documentation | Synthesis & Final Presentation |
See CONTRIBUTING for additional information.
This project is in the worldwide public domain. As stated in CONTRIBUTING:
This project is in the public domain within the United States, and copyright and related rights in the work worldwide are waived through the CC0 1.0 Universal public domain dedication.
All contributions to this project will be released under the CC0 dedication. By submitting a pull request, you are agreeing to comply with this waiver of copyright interest.