How Address Validation Can Improve the Effectiveness of Critical Safety Net Programs

Many critical functions of public benefits delivery happen via mail. Whether it’s delivering a reminder about an interview, important information regarding benefits, or a client’s Electronic Benefit Transfer (EBT) card, government agencies often rely on paper mail to keep clients informed and deliver benefits. To do this, they need deliverable, up-to-date mailing addresses. 

But that isn’t as easy as it sounds. Clients may move around and update their mailing address with some government programs they interact with, but not others. Their addresses in the system might have errors, especially if they give their address over the phone to a caseworker and something gets typed in wrong.

Undeliverable mail can lead to people missing important information, delayed delivery of benefits, and extra costs and work for government agencies. Sometimes agencies will have thousands of undeliverable addresses, and correcting them all manually takes an enormous amount of time.  A process called address validation is a really solid option for solving this problem, and the good news is that it can be done at scale with digital tools.

Considerations for building an address validation process

When considering solutions for the issue of proper mail delivery, we asked questions like: What are the best ways to ensure mail is delivered successfully without increasing friction for clients? What tools and technologies for validating addresses are available, and what are the pros and cons of each? How do we decide which tools and methods are best in different situations?

We settled on two main considerations when agencies are thinking through their current process and technology for address validation:

• • When collecting a new or updated address, how can we ensure it’s valid and deliverable by the USPS? When a client updates their address, what ways can we minimize human error and verify that quality data enters the system? Interactive web forms, such as those in benefits applications, can use address validation technology to catch and correct errors when they’re detected. 
  • How can we maximize the likelihood of having a correct and current address? Since people don’t consistently update their addresses with government agencies, bulk validation of addresses sourced from eligibility systems can check the deliverability of addresses on file and prompt caseworkers when direct outreach to clients is needed.

Our team built a demo application showing how to use address validation technology at scale to improve public benefits delivery. Our digital address validation tool is freely available and usable by any state agency that needs to do address validation. Check out the walkthrough video, demo application, and  sample code.

Strategies for implementing address validation

There are three main strategies we recommend when agencies are considering implementing address validation processes. 

Step 1: Improve address quality at the point of data entry

When collecting an address, we recommend using an autocomplete/typeahead user interface element. As people type their address into a combo box, a connected web service provides suggested addresses as they type, which are displayed for selection as shown below. This type of user interface allows the client to choose from a list of suggested addresses that are known to be valid.

As a best practice, the points of manual address entry where an autocomplete/typeahead user interface element should be implemented are:

• 📄Public benefits online applications
• 📱Any forms or case management systems being used by customer service agents or agency staff to:
  • Take client address information over the phone and enter it into a data system
  • Digitize client address information based on a paper benefits applications
• 💻Any self-service customer support tool where a client can independently enter or correct their address information. This might be a self-service portal, via a chatbot or live chat tool.  

Step 2: Confirm address deliverability with USPS

Whether a person selects an address from an autocomplete suggestion or enters it manually, the address should be checked against the USPS delivery point database for validity. The user interface should provide feedback on the validation to the user.

Various APIs exist for this purpose, including the official, free-of-charge USPS Address Validation API, as well as several commercial options, such as those from Smarty and Google Maps, which both include CASS™-certified USPS validation capabilities. When selecting a commercial address validation service, it is crucial to choose one that is CASS™-certified and provides USPS validation results. If you plan to retain detailed validation data in your databases, be sure to review the service’s terms of use to ensure there are no restrictions on data retention.

For more technical information about key validation data points and information, check out our technical resource.

Step 3: Validate addresses in bulk

Let’s look at an example challenge with address validation in bulk that a lot of agencies across the country are facing. Summer EBT is the first new, permanent federal food assistance program in almost 50 years, and many families are eligible to receive S-EBT benefits automatically due to their participation in other safety net programs, such as  the National School Lunch Program, Medicaid, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations, or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. This means states have to sift through a mountain of existing program data and new data from applications to ensure families receive their benefits. 

Since so many people are eligible for Summer EBT through a “streamlined certification” process, it’s essential to check the validity of the addresses in the streamlined certification dataset. The quality of these addresses may vary widely depending on their provenance and age. We recommend first using offline pre-processing of addresses to prevent API usage costs, and then using address validation tools like USPS, Smarty, Google Maps, or others to validate large datasets. Be sure to review the terms of use before selecting a commercial bulk validation option; some commercial address validation services have terms that significantly restrict data retention when used in backend processing, where no client interaction occurs.

Address validation is worth investing in

Address validation is a clear solution to promote timely and accurate delivery of benefits, which provides major improvements to the experience for everyone involved: clients get their benefits on time, caseworkers don’t have to handle returned mail or hunt down accurate information manually, and agencies reduce excess costs associated with the re-issuance of benefits cards. The tools to make this change are readily available to agencies, and the choice to use human-centered technology to address this problem can make a significant difference.