Inside Olympia – DSHS and the Future of Service Delivery

“I think we have to think about how to be innovative, again, streamlining our systems, thinking about new technologies, thinking about new ways to work with folks in the community to get their best practices in our systems.” – WA Dept. of Social and Health Services Secretary Angela Ramirez

The head of the state’s largest agency says DSHS is heading into the 2027 legislative session pursuing retrenchment and modernization at the same time. DSHS has identified about $5 million in savings and could leave vacancies unfilled, consolidate systems and narrow eligibility for some programs. 

But Ramirez is also proposing investments intended to make the agency more efficient, including an artificial intelligence pilot aimed at reducing errors in the SNAP food assistance program, which rose nearly 1 percent in 2025 to 6.98%. Ramirez says the technology would flag cases for human review, not determine eligibility.

“We are putting on the table the idea that we would use use a system not to make the decisions, not to use AI to to do the role that we need humans to do, which is to make the end of the day decision, but to try to call through which cases should we be looking at to give ourselves a fighting chance at taking on this error rate,” she said.

Federal benefit changes are adding new administrative and financial pressures as DSHS manages a constrained budget and unionized workforce.