Policy & Practice | Fall 2023

association news

By Nana Sasu and Jess Maneely

Reimagining Customer Service: The Aligned Customer-Centered Ecosystem of Supports and Services (ACCESS) Initiative

T he “Aligned Customer-Centered Ecosystem of Supports & Services (ACCESS)” project, led by the American Public Human Services Association (APHSA) and the National Association of State Workforce Agencies (NASWA), is a two-year ini tiative aimed at modernizing public benefits and services. The ACCESS project aims to surface and align modernization efforts that organiza tions—across the wide health, human services, and labor ecosystem—are

foundational benefits that help families achieve economic mobility, ultimately creating more user-friendly, customer centered experiences. Through convenings, meetings, focus groups, and other engagement strategies that will be published in a forthcoming public collaborator engagement plan, APHSA and NASWA will glean insights from collabora tors to generate a national roadmap for aligned, customer-centered data and systems integration. Cross-sector

undertaking in service of promoting truly customer-centered improvements to program design and delivery. The purpose of the project is to align capacity-building efforts across state agencies and their partners that are focused on developing modern, inte grated, and customer-centered access to benefits and supportive services that promote economic mobility. The goal of this work is to spark a funda mental shift in how agencies consider linking data and systems across the

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