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Roughly 200,000 service members leave the military every year in a process called service member transition. During transition, Veterans must navigate finding employment, education, housing, and healthcare all while re-establishing relationships with loved ones and managing finances. The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) offers ample resources from family support to disability compensation to healthcare benefits. But it can be challenging for Veterans to understand how to utilize these resources. That’s why around half of recently separated Veterans don’t leverage their available benefits and resources. VA, along with several other federal agencies, is looking to change that by prototyping a digital solution that provides customized and integrated information on service member transition.
In partnership with Benefits Data Trust (BDT), we’re creating, testing, and piloting an AI-powered tool that may help government agency staff and benefits navigators easily identify which families can enroll in key public benefit programs such as the Special Supplemental Program for Women Infants and Children (WIC), the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and Medicaid. In order to identify use cases for AI-powered tools and opportunities for experimentation, we conducted user research with stakeholders at every level of the benefits application process. We prioritized speaking with diverse populations so that our research would reflect a variety of lived experiences and contribute to technological advancements that promote equity. Our research yielded powerful insights into how AI might be leveraged in the public benefits space. Armed with these insights, we’re conducting a series of human-centered experiments to better understand how AI-powered tools might expand access to public benefits.
In our country, people do not have access to the same opportunities and resources. Factors such as race, ethnicity, socioeconomic class, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, and more can affect everything from getting a job to getting a loan. College admissions are no different, which is why affirmative action was so important to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I) in academia. When the Supreme Court upended affirmative action last year, it delivered a major blow to DE&I efforts at colleges and universities. At Nava, we believe our workforce should reflect the diversity of the populations we serve. We also recognize that many people face barriers to entering the professional world based on aspects of their identities. With the end of affirmative action, those barriers have become even higher for many people.
Civic technologists work on government services that impact millions of people every day. For private sector technology workers who want to make a bigger public impact, starting a career in civic tech is a great option. Building public services that are simple, effective, and accessible requires designers, engineers, product managers, and many other tech professionals with experience building human-centered products. At Nava, our employees have done everything from supporting the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as they build crucial public health technology to working with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to help beneficiaries get preventive care. Though our work presents unique challenges, it can also be extremely rewarding and fulfilling.
It’s hard to describe what a typical day at Nava is like because no two days are ever the same. Every day brings new projects, challenges, and opportunities. So we’re sharing just a glimpse of what work is actually like for different Navanauts. Here’s what Afia Genfi, Delivery Manager, has been up to lately.
It’s hard to describe what a typical day at Nava is like because no two days are ever the same. Every day brings new projects, challenges, and opportunities. So we’re sharing just a glimpse of what work is actually like for different Navanauts. Here’s what Alsia Plybeah, a software engineer who started at Nava as an apprentice, has been up to lately.
Gender Equity is Nava’s largest Employee Resource Group. Learn more about what gender equity and community mean to these members.
Meet a few of our members of Juntos, Nava’s Hispanic/Latinx Employee Resource Group.
Government leaders are facing an unprecedented surge in need and the consequent challenges of quickly rolling out new programs in response to COVID-19. It's never been more important for government services to be simple, effective, and accessible to all. But while the pandemic has increased the urgency of that work, it's also highlighted the constraints of brittle legacy systems. Nava was founded to support critical public services in times like these. Here are a few ways we can help your team.
Five years ago, we started Nava as a public benefit corporation because we wanted to live in a world where public institutions are able to earn trust by quickly and effectively responding to people’s needs. But it feels like we’re a long ways away from that right now. What’s being made painfully clear during the global pandemic is that the failure of critical public services causes real harm, both physical and financial. It has never been more important for government services to be simple, effective, and accessible to all. Five years in, Nava is now over 130 people, and growing quickly. Our mission hasn’t changed—we’re here to improve the simplicity, effectiveness, and accessibility of critical government services. And we’re here to help agencies be more adaptable in a world where the only constant is change. In our latest public benefit report, we're proud to share how we worked with and learned from our government partners to help tens of millions of people better access critical services.
