About

What is ACCESS NYC?

ACCESS NYC is a website for New Yorkers who need information about benefits and programs. 

• Eligibility Screening – Check potential eligibility for over 40 benefits in 10 easy steps. Text or email your eligibility results.
• Program Guides – Get information for over 80 city, state, and federal benefits and services. Details include: how a program works, how to qualify, what documents are needed, options for how to apply (online, phone, mail, in-person), and how to receive help.

ACCESS NYC is human-translated and fully compliant under Local Law 30, which requires documents and services distributed to the public by City agencies be made available in 11 languages (Arabic, Bengali, Chinese (traditional), French, Haitian Creole, Korean, Polish, Russian, Spanish, Urdu).

List a program

ACCESS NYC gets over 2 million visits every year. Increase visibility to your program by listing it on ACCESS NYC. See programs that are currently on ACCESS NYC.

The ACCESS NYC team will work with you to:

• Publish a program guide describing the program in plain language
• Incorporate your program on the eligibility screener to further boost engagement

To start the process of listing a program, fill out the program intake form. The ACCESS NYC team will review your submission and contact you with next steps.

How We Created ACCESS NYC

ACCESS NYC was redesigned by the Service Design Studio and Product Team at the Mayor’s Office for Economic Opportunity (NYC Opportunity) starting in the summer of 2016 through an iterative prototyping process that engaged residents, social workers, case managers, and government agency staff. The new design and core user experience were created in-house.

ACCESS NYC relaunched in March 2017 with support from our technology development partner, Blue State Digital. We continue to engage New Yorkers, providers, and government agencies in the ongoing improvement and expansion of ACCESS NYC.

Technology Powering ACCESS NYC

Public program information is managed and updated in partnership with government agencies using Content Workflow, an editorial workflow and content management tool.

The ACCESS NYC website is powered by WordPress, an open-source content management system. The website also uses a variety of WordPress plugins for customization, and is hosted on WP Engine.

The ACCESS NYC screener is a single page web application powered by an API built on the Drools Business Rules Management System. The API is hosted on Amazon Web Services through the NYC Office of Technology and Innovation.

All benefit program information and screener calculations used on ACCESS NYC are publicly available through the NYC Benefits Platform resources below.

ACCESS NYC’s underlying code is open source and available through the ACCESS NYC GitHub repository.

The front-end components and styles used on ACCESS NYC can be found in the NYC Opportunity Standard library, which borrows from the U.S. Web Design System, the Bourbon SASS Tool Set, and Tailwind.css Utility Framework.

Links

• ACCESS NYC Github Repository
• NYC Opportunity Github Repositories
• NYC Opportunity on Packagist
• Benefits and Programs API
• NYC Opportunity Standard

NYC Benefits Platform

We support organizations that make it easier for NYC residents to discover and be aware of multiple benefits they may be eligible for through open resources including:

• NYC Benefits and Programs Dataset: plain language, standardized public info for 80+ programs featured on ACCESS NYC and other websites our office maintains.
• NYC Benefits Screening API: Machine-readable calculations and criteria for benefits screening that power the ACCESS NYC screening questionnaire. We hope this can aid in accelerating the creation of new screening tools, and provide opportunities to screen households based on existing information.
• Video: Public Benefits Awareness & Screening: An Intro to the NYC Benefits Platform (from NYC Open Data Week 2024)

Awards & Recognition

• ACCESS NYC Receives “2020 Government Experience Award” Mayor’s Office for Economic Opportunity | 09.30.2020
• ACCESS NYC Is Named “City on a Cloud Innovation Challenge” Winner Mayor’s Office for Economic Opportunity | 12.11.2019
• ACCESS NYC Receives Award for “Best Application Serving The Public” Mayor’s Office for Economic Opportunity | 9.22.2017

Read More About ACCESS NYC

• New York City Demystifies Social Service Benefits Screening GovTech | 4.15.2019
• NYC Opportunity and the Public Engagement Unit Partner for Facilitated Benefits Screening and Enrollment Mayor’s Office for Economic Opportunity | 4.10.2018
• Increasing Online Language Accessibility: ACCESS NYC Now in Eleven Languages Mayor’s Office for Economic Opportunity | 3.8.2018
• Case Study of ACCESS NYC – Part 1 Mayor’s Office for Economic Opportunity | 3.8.2018
• Case Study of ACCESS NYC – Part 2 Mayor’s Office for Economic Opportunity | 3.13.2018
• Rebuilding ACCESS NYC with Blue State Digital Torque: from WPEngine | 2.14.2018

Contact Us

We offer on-demand trainings for City agencies and community-based organizations and provide outreach materials via our Training & Support Page.