At a Glance

Funder:

U.S. Department of Agriculture, Food and Nutrition Service

Project Time Frame:

2008-2011

Streamlining the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program

Millions of Americans rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to help them put food on the table. But in many states, the demand for services is growing beyond what the program can easily accommodate. To make the most of limited resources, states are modernizing the administration of their programs. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) is committed to understanding those modernization initiatives and helping states communicate promising practices to one another. The attempts to modernize the program took many forms, including simplifying office procedures, reducing administration costs, and improving client access to services.

FNS engaged Mathematica to help measure the performance of SNAP modernization efforts across the nation. This project involves:

Creating a conceptual framework to measure the performance of SNAP modernization activities
Describing each state’s SNAP performance measures and standards
Providing detailed results of those measures for each state
Assessing the pros and cons of using alternative performance measures and standards across states

In the first stage, Mathematica is collecting background information from the FNS national and regional offices, state agencies, and national organizations involved in SNAP. This information is being used to identify initial performance measures and develop data collection instruments. In the second stage, we are conducting phone interviews with all state SNAP agencies, 150 county and local agencies, and 122 community organizations and businesses that partner with the agencies. We are also conducting site visits to 10 states. Finally, in stage three, we are briefing FNS on the findings and preparing two reports.