Digital Public Works
Digital Public Works (DPW) is fixing the process failure that prevents millions of Americans from accessing government benefits: income verification. By pairing purpose-built software with deep state-agency partnerships, DPW has reduced the time it takes a family to prove their income from 45 minutes to under six minutes, and in early pilots, not a single participant was denied benefits due to missing paperwork.
The Problem
Millions of Americans qualify for government assistance programs like SNAP and Medicaid, yet are denied or give up at a single chokepoint: proving their income. To verify eligibility, applicants are asked to track down pay stubs, employer letters, and bank statements. This process takes over 45 minutes on average and adds complexity for already overburdened agency caseworkers. Roughly one in three benefit denials occurs simply because someone could not gather the right documents in time. In Pennsylvania alone, the vast majority of payment errors in the food assistance program stem from income reporting failures, which leaves billions of dollars in aid unclaimed each year.
Most states use commercial data services to automate income checks, yet these systems often exclude gig workers, the self-employed, and those with variable hours, forcing caseworkers and families into slow, confusing manual processes that cause long delays and high drop-off rates. These commercial services are also expensive, and new federal legislation is raising the stakes further, introducing financial penalties for states with high error rates and mandating more frequent income checks that current systems cannot handle at scale.
The Solution
Digital Public Works eases the burden for families and streamlines the work for states through their innovative software, DiCIT, which enables people to securely and accurately share their income with benefit programs. Their software lets applicants share their income information directly from their payroll or gig-work account with a simple, secure click. The system automatically pulls the necessary data and sends it to the state, cutting the process from nearly an hour to under six minutes.
Digital Public Works’ unique asset is their team. They are veterans of the federal government’s technology corps who work alongside state agencies to redesign the policies and workflows that create bureaucratic bottlenecks, iteratively improving software and removing procedural barriers to deliver better outcomes. Digital Public Works also open sources their code to establish shared technical standards that any state can adopt, making the whole system easier to improve over time.
DPW is designed to be financially sustainable. Because platform costs are fixed while integration costs decline as usage scales, DPW covers a growing share of its operating costs through earned revenue as new states and programs are onboarded. After piloting in Pennsylvania and Arizona, DPW is actively expanding to additional states, with a near-term pipeline that would bring direct reach to more than 1 million people per year within the next three to five years
Impact
Reduced income verification time from 45 minutes to under six minutes — an 87% reduction in burden on families.
Nearly 7,500 families served across three states.
83% document submission rate and 56% same-session completion rate in pilot cohorts, far exceeding state benchmarks.
Leadership
Michael Burstein
Michael co-founded DPW after leading federal benefits technology at the U.S. Digital Service, where he directed a portfolio focused on improving Americans’ access to safety-net programs and served as Chief of Staff for the USDS-CDC COVID response. Previously, he was General Counsel and Head of Finance at civic technology firm Truss. He holds a J.D. from UC Berkeley School of Law.