States nationwide are facing critical pressure to reduce their SNAP Payment Error Rates (PER), with the national average currently just under 11%. Due to H.R. 1 provisions passed in 2025, in Fiscal Year (FY) 2028, two-thirds of all states will have to pay at least $100 million in additional SNAP funding annually if they don’t reduce PERs to below 6%. If state lawmakers can't come up with the money, some states warn they will have to stop offering SNAP altogether.
From September 2025 - February 2026, U.S. Digital Response partnered with three states, including Arizona’s Department of Economic Security, North Carolina’s Department of Health and Human Services, and Maryland Department of Human Services - Family Investment Administration to perform hands-on qualitative and quantitative research to understand root causes of PER and identify realistic interventions all states can test to improve payment accuracy. Our work with these states uncovered several system-wide challenges to SNAP payment accuracy including eligibility system usability, internal feedback loops, and client communications.
To help states overcome these barriers and serve their communities, we’re releasing our SNAP Payment Accuracy Playbook: a free resource that focuses on strategies that states can test immediately to reduce PER and lessen the burden on frontline eligibility workers. Our recommendations focus on technology and process changes that don’t require changes to current policy or expensive new tech investments.
Inside the playbook you will find:
- Cross-state findings from direct research and analysis in three states
- A practical guide to analyzing your error data and tracking if changes are working
- Recommended interventions, organized by expected impact and effort
- Templates and a framework for states that want to run a similar research sprint
Most errors aren't caseworker errors
Errors don’t happen because frontline staff lack knowledge. They're working with complicated rules, clunky tools, and too many cases in too short of a time. Fixing errors means fixing the systems and processes workers use. Our approach is grounded in a simple belief: reducing payment errors and improving the work experience for staff go hand in hand. By identifying where they encounter process or system friction and understanding what drives common errors, we can make their jobs more straightforward—and move toward systems and tooling that make it difficult to make mistakes in the first place.
What you can do now
Based on our findings across states, here are practical starting points for state SNAP leaders:
Analyze your error patterns. Before designing interventions, understand where your errors actually come from. Request a breakdown of your QC data by error category, case action type (application vs. recertification), and attribution (agency vs. client). The specific drivers vary by state—your priorities should be based on your data.
Look for systemic causes, not individual blame. When you see caseworker errors in your data, ask what in the system, process, or tools made that error more likely. Unclear policy guidance? A confusing form? A backlog that made timely processing impossible? These are fixable.
Shift Quality Assurance (QA) upstream. If your QA process focuses on reviewing already-processed cases, consider piloting a pre-determination review for a sample of your caseload. The goal is catching errors before they count.
Start small and measure. Pick one intervention, implement it as a pilot, and track results. Each change or implementation a state makes should have a dedicated set of metrics to track against, not just measuring PER.
Read the full report here.
