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Good practice Imported

Maryland's SUN Bucks Bilingual AI Chatbot — Claude-Powered Benefits Support for 600,000+ Families

United States of America · Baltimore · See the United States of America profile

Evidence: Descriptive / self-reported Top 62% 53/100 · Ask Evidence Copilot about this practice

In June 2025 Maryland launched a bilingual Claude-powered chatbot for its $72.5M SUN Bucks food-benefit program, reaching 600,000+ residents and cutting call-center volume, then expanded to benefits caseworking — while a federal dispute exposed real governance limits.

$72.5 million
SUN Bucks program value
600,000+
Marylanders using chatbot
~18,000
Families newly reached (independent estimate)
~150,000
Monthly benefit-verification documents in expansion
$525,000
Rockefeller Foundation grant
Maryland's SUN Bucks Bilingual AI Chatbot — Claude-Powered Benefits Support for 600,000+ Families

Details

Maturity
Scaling
Promoter
Maryland Department of Human Services / Governor's Innovation Team (with Anthropic, Percepta)
Period
2025–present
Keywords
social welfare, food assistance, digital government, generative AI

Context

Maryland administers SUN Bucks (Summer EBT), providing food benefits to low-income families with school-age children; in June 2025 the state deployed a bilingual chatbot built on Anthropic's Claude to help families access the $72.5 million benefit.

Activities

More than 600,000 Marylanders used the chatbot; in November 2025 the partnership expanded, funded partly by a $525,000 Rockefeller Foundation grant, to apply Claude to roughly 150,000 monthly benefit-verification documents across SNAP, Medicaid, TANF and WIC.

Results

The state reported reduced call-center volume; independent reporting separately put newly reached families at around 18,000.

Conclusions

The expansion has run into real friction: the U.S. Defense Secretary designated Anthropic a 'supply-chain risk' in March 2026 amid a federal AI-vendor dispute, and the state's own portal relaunch excluded the AI assistant citing insufficient comfort with the technology.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Medium (€50k–€500k) — Funded in part by a $525,000 Rockefeller Foundation grant for the caseworker-facing expansion; core chatbot cost not separately itemised.
Time to results
Medium (1–3 years) — Chatbot launched June 2025; expansion to benefit-verification announced November 2025.
Staffing & skills
Maryland Department of Human Services caseworkers, Governor's Innovation Team

Conditions for success

  • bilingual (English/Spanish) support
  • integration with existing call-centre workflows

Common failure modes

  • U.S. Defense Secretary designated Anthropic a 'supply-chain risk' in March 2026 amid a federal AI-vendor dispute
  • state IT secretary acknowledged little visibility into that designation
  • MarylandBenefits.org portal relaunch excluded the AI assistant citing insufficient comfort with the technology

Commonly funded by

National / regional programmes Philanthropic / foundation funding

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Data sources

Where this practice's information was retrieved from, and when.

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