Technology allows Minnesotans to connect with government and receive the support they need. In April, the state marked an important milestone in the pandemic response – 1 million text messages sent to families to inform them about benefits for the state’s Pandemic Electronic Benefits Transfer (P-EBT) program. 

The COVID-19 pandemic led many families in Minnesota to face food insecurity. In March, the federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act created the P-EBT program to provide food benefits to families with children who qualified for free and reduced meals at school, but who were not receiving those meals because school buildings had closed. 

Minnesota IT Services (MNIT), Minnesota Department of Human Services (DHS), and Code for America Launched a web-based application for families to apply for benefits. The P-EBT project required extensive data matching with the Minnesota Department of Education to verify families’ free and reduced-price meal eligibility.

Evolution to text message notifications

To help Minnesotans receive their benefits as quickly as possible, and to ensure an efficient process, MNIT, DHS, and Amazon Web Services also created a program to text P-EBT eligible clients. Three MNIT groups – MNIT DHS, and teams at MNIT Enterprise working on system security and cloud technologies – collaborated with Amazon Web Services to spin up the technology, ensure the infrastructure was in place, and identify security mechanisms. Within two months, the teams successfully launched the P-EBT text message option. “Running this text message program in the cloud, with the proper set up, allows DHS staff to send out text messages to families who need support from P-EBT without MNIT’s help,” says Woody Rasmussen, Integration Architect for MNIT DHS.

The text messages help quickly alert Minnesotans who applied for P-EBT that their benefits had been issued, and the texts provide general information about the program. Messages have been sent in eight different languages: English, Spanish, Hmong, Arabic, Somali, Vietnamese, Karen and Russian. Since the text program launched, DHS surveyed individuals in the P-EBT program and found that over 90% preferred receiving their information about the program through text messages.

“Passing the 1 million texts milestone is a really good moment to celebrate. It’s incredible to think of how many people we were able to reach out to in a short amount of time,” adds Nandini Namburi, Systems Architect for MNIT DHS.  

To learn more about P-EBT, visit the the P-EBT webpage.