We wrapped up Rules as Code Demo Day with Max Ghenis and Nikhil Woodruff, the founders of PolicyEngine. The PolicyEngine web app computes the impact of tax and benefit policy in the US and the UK. With PolicyEngine, anyone can freely calculate their taxes and benefits under current law and customizable policy reforms, and also estimate the society-wide impacts of those reforms. Policymakers and think tanks from across the political spectrum can analyze actual policy. PolicyEngine is built atop the open source OpenFisca US and UK microsimulation models and they are building an open unified data set utilizing data from the Policy Rules Database, Current Population Survey, Survey of Consumer Finances, Consumer Expenditures, tax records, and IRS Public Use File.
The team developed an AI solution to assist benefit navigators with in-the-moment program information, finding that while LLMs are useful for summarizing and interpreting text, they are not ideal for implementing strict formulas like benefit calculations, but can accelerate the eligibility process by leveraging their strengths in general tasks.
The team explored using LLMs to interpret the Program Operations Manual System (POMS) into plain language logic models and flowcharts as educational resources for SSI and SSDI eligibility, benchmarking LLMs in RAG methods for reliability in answering queries and providing useful instructions to users.
The team developed an application to simplify Medicaid and CHIP applications through LLM APIs while addressing limitations such as hallucinations and outdated information by implementing a selective input process for clean and current data.
At Rules as Code Demo Day Executive Director Zareena Mayn and Chief Technology Officer Dize Hacioglu of mRelief demoed the code for their Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) eligibility screener. mRelief is a women-led team that provides a web-based and text message-based SNAP eligibility screener to all 53 states and territories that participate in SNAP. They demonstrated how they have modularized their code to host federal program rules and state-specific rules.
Building on our February 2022 report Benefit Eligibility Rules as Code: Reducing the Gap Between Policy and Service Delivery for the Safety Net, the Beeck Center’s Digital Benefits Network (DBN) recently held a convening to share progress and potential in digitizing benefits eligibility and to begin addressing how a national approach could be started.
The team introduced "Policy Pulse," a tool to help policy analysts understand laws and regulations better by comparing current policies with their original goals to identify implementation issues.
The team conducted experiments to determine whether clients would be responsive to proactive support offered by a chatbot, and identify the ideal timing of the intervention.
The team examined how AI, specifically LLMs, could streamline the case review process for SNAP applications to alleviate the burden on case workers while potentially improving accuracy.
The team explored the performance of various AI chatbots and LLMs in supporting the adoption of Rules as Code for SNAP and Medicaid policies using policy data from Georgia and Oklahoma.
