When presented with a policy, states are saddled with the burden of turning that policy into code. This translation is not always clean, and isn't always updated when the policy itself is updated. As a result, logic can often reflect old, outdated, or misunderstood policies, resulting in people being improperly failed during ex parte.
The following are signs that the implementation logic may not match policy:
- Unintelligible error codes
- Failure reasons that no one can explain
- Very old/outdated documentation
- References to old policies
- Mismatches in estimates compared to live measurements
- For example, if a change was estimated to impact X people, but only impacted 1% of that, it may be a policy implementation issue
Bring policy staff together with vendors and clarify:
- What does the policy actually instruct?
- Explain it in the plainest language possible and verify with experts.
- Cite regulation and statute if necessary.
- Call experts whenever anything is unclear.
- How is this logic currently implemented?
- Is the implementation correct?
- Are there people who are being missed by the implementation?
- Could the implementation be more efficient?
- Could the implementation be less strict?