CEEWB: The Future of SNAP

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costs, improve customer service, and strengthen program impacts. Certain policies beyond SNAP also have similar impacts, such as those that keep SNAP and other programs from freely using important data bases that could improve administration and access. Similarly, states must have the option to implement horizontally integrated systems (particularly their information technology components) that streamline the eligibility and verification processes for SNAP, bringing them closer together where possible and without losing unique SNAP program aspects, with health, cash assistance, and other human services programs. Such integration will improve access, save administrative costs, improve program integrity, and maximize states’ ability to take advantage of extended enhanced federal funding. We believe that a combination of simpler program rules, rapid modernization of eligibility and verification methods, and a far more intentional system of training and communication are critically important next steps in SNAP’s progression as a fully realized nutrition and economic support program. We also call for a far broader and more outcome-focused way of assessing SNAP’s performance and impacts overall, including an independent analysis of what other metrics beyond QC are most important to consider and how they should be administered. These principles are reflected in the following suggestions for SNAP reauthorization. Program Simplification APHSA has for decades urged simplification of SNAP rules, and proper credit goes to Congress, several Administrations, and the program’s stakeholders for reducing complexity in many areas. However, the program still has far to go. SNAP remains one of the most challenging assistance programs for customers to understand and for agencies to administer, and remains tied to eligibility and verification procedures that are more difficult than those in most other major programs, that are often outdated in their application, and that take too little account of their interaction with

the rest of the health and human services system. Coordination and interoperability – While SNAP certainly has some points of focus and service that are different from other health and human services programs, on the whole it serves many of the same people with the same broad aim of improving and sustaining their well-being, independence, and capacity. By often functioning in isolation, SNAP misses many opportunities to interact with other programs and thus to enhance access and efficiency. One clear example is limitations on taking full advantage of the new information systems being implemented for health care, which can connect to SNAP in limited ways but cannot bridge SNAP’s differences in definitions of income and households and its approaches to interviewing and verification (see also Section II below). Another example concerns the current inability to effectively align SNAP and WIC, which could be significantly helped by a common benefit issuance process despite program income eligibility differences. Greater interoperability and alignment among these large systems would improve access by enhancing “single-portal” contact and reducing duplication in collecting and verifying case information. Many states have waivers in place to create greater interoperability, but there is little impact measurement of the success of waivers by FNS and where waivers currently demonstrate both their effectiveness and ability to be replicated in other states, they must continually be extended rather than simply made a permanent part of program delivery. Simplified benefit calculations – Simpler SNAP rules would reduce the opportunities for errors and reduce administrative burdens for states and confusion for customers. SNAP’s profusion of eligibility factors attempts to reflect precisely every type of change in both income and household expense factors – perhaps a desirable goal in theory, but these factors are now so numerous and so complex that it is questionable whether there is still a net benefit to this approach. Many SNAP households have frequent changes that strain our resources to constantly track and verify them and current client