This notice sets forth the interpretation that the U.S. Department of Agriculture uses for the term “Federal public benefit” as used in Title IV of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996. In doing so, this notice supersedes any prior interpretation in any notice or other document issued by any USDA agency. This notice also describes and preliminarily identifies the USDA programs that provide “Federal public benefits” within the scope of PRWORA.
The Operating Rules and Technical Implementation Guide are technical resources for use by all state agencies, authorized WIC vendors and EBT industry stakeholders to apply in their EBT implementation projects for consistency in WIC EBT online purchase messages and file handling processes utilized by both smart card/offline and magstrip/online WIC EBT systems.