We work in partnership with state agencies to provide nutrition assistance to Americans in need through the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. It is imperative that USDA eliminates bureaucratic duplication and inefficiency and enhances the government's ability not only to have point-in-time information but also to detect overpayments and fraud.
Pursuant to the provisions of the Privacy Act of 1974 and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Circular No. A-108, notice is hereby given that the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) proposes to create a new system of records (SOR) entitled USDA/FNS-15, “National Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) Information Database.”
We periodically examine how SNAP households use their monthly EBT benefits, including number of purchase transactions per month, average purchase amount, types of retailers frequented, and rate at which households exhaust their benefits over the month. This study, the fourth in the series, was done to assess monthly EBT redemption patterns during FY 2022 when SNAP EBT benefits were much larger than usual due to pandemic funding. By FY 2022, SNAP households could also use SNAP EBT to purchase groceries from authorized online retailers, so we analyzed benefits redeemed through online purchasing.
We periodically examine SNAP benefit redemption patterns related to the timing, number, and dollar amount of transactions and the rate at which households spend down and exhaust their monthly benefits. These studies also report on the number of transactions made and the share of benefits redeemed at various types of stores.
On March 20, 2025, President Trump issued Executive Order 14243, Stopping Waste, Fraud, and Abuse by Eliminating Information Silos. Among myriad important directives, this Executive Order required agency heads to “take all necessary steps, to the maximum extent consistent with law, to ensure the Federal Government has unfettered access to comprehensive data from all state programs that receive federal funding, including, as appropriate, data generated by those programs but maintained in third-party databases.”
This collection is for providing SNAP households advance or concurrent notice of state agency action to store unused SNAP benefits offline due to three or more months of account inactivity and for those households to seek reinstatement of benefits prior to permanent expungement. Additionally, this collection is for providing SNAP households advance or concurrent notice prior to the state agency expunging unused SNAP benefits from the household's Electronic Benefit Transfer account due to nine months of account inactivity.
In the event of a lapse in funding due the expiration of the current continuing resolution on March 15, 2025, state agencies should continue to administer the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) in accordance with federal statutes and regulations, following normal processes and timelines to send issuance files and to issue benefits through the end of April 2025.
This memorandum is intended to clarify the impact of the American Relief Act of 2025 on upcoming SNAP benefit issuance.
The activities that are covered by this Information Collection Request include the transition from individual collections for program waivers and state plans to a new application supporting multiple USDA programs.
This memorandum covers questions related to provisions in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program: Standardization of Heating and Cooling Standard Utility Allowances rule and the implementation process. FNS plans to publish additional question and answer guidance in the following months.
