Indiana / IBM eligibility modernization

A consortium led by IBM and Affiliated Computer Services ran welfare eligibility for Indiana under a ten-year contract from 2006. Its system, launched in 2007, replaced caseworker relationships with call centers, document imaging, and automated timeliness rules. When a document was not matched to a case in time, the rules denied or closed the case for 'failure to cooperate'.

What happened

By 2009, more than a million Indiana residents had lost or been denied food stamps, Medicaid, or cash benefits, The Nation reports. That was a 54 percent increase in denials over the previous three years.

Many denials were for procedural 'failure to cooperate in establishing eligibility,' not for being ineligible. The phrase names a procedural category. It is not a finding that any applicant refused to cooperate.

How the denials happened

Applicants faxed millions of pages of documents to a processing center in Marion. So many disappeared that advocates called it 'the black hole in Marion,' The Nation reports.

If one page among dozens was too dark to read, damaged in transmission, or indexed to the wrong case, the application was denied. Applicants who waited on hold and then could not receive a callback were also denied for 'failure to cooperate.' This example draws the document route only.

The case file calls the automation less a model than a rigid procedural pipeline. The harm ran through the document pipeline, not through a fraud score.

The system began in a pilot area and then reached 47 more counties, The Nation reports. One set of vendor rules decided every case in the counties it reached. So a single procedural flaw repeated across the caseload instead of scattering.

Who was left to catch mistakes

Caseworkers were no longer responsible for families, The Nation reports. They became responsible for tasks assigned through a computerized queue, and applicants dealt with private call centers.

The case file reads the harm this way. When denial is the default and no one is left to resolve a document lost, unreadable, or filed to the wrong case, routine failures become mass denials.

Why it was built this way

Cost-cutting targets drove the modernization, the case file says. The error the system was built to prevent was overpayment, not wrongful denial. The case file calls that a governance choice, and usually an unexamined one.

How it ended

Governor Mitch Daniels admitted the experiment was a failure and canceled the state's contract with IBM, The Nation reports. Government Technology dates the cancellation to October 2009, about three years into the ten-year contract.

Indiana and IBM then sued each other, and the case file records years of litigation. This case does not judge who was right.

The cancellation is the one documented use of the state's power to stop the system. The sources describe no earlier halt.

Where the facts come from

The facts here come from four sources. They are Virginia Eubanks's 2018 book Automating Inequality and her article in The Nation, "Want to Cut Welfare? There's an App for That." The others are reports on the lawsuits by Government Technology and IEEE Spectrum.

What the available tools can and cannot address

A failure pathway is a link between two parts of the network, where a mistake made by one part can be passed on to the other. A closed pathway is one that mistakes stop passing along. The work along it may go on.

This case has a budget of 12 units. Contained means the network's mistakes are corrected rather than building on each other.

Under Explore (No Targets), which sets no targets, one tool keeps the mistakes contained: Vet connections, at 3 of the 12 units. Under Service Targets Only, the same tool also meets the targets. That level asks for the automated system to be helping the work.

Vet connections allows a connection between systems only where it is explicitly approved. On this network, three steps each connect two systems with no person between them. They are the scanning of documents into the case store, the rules' reading of the case file, and the automatic closure. Vetting those connections stops mistakes passing along all three. The one rule set also repeats fewer mistakes.

Under Explore, Gate record entries with Escalate checks also keeps the mistakes contained, for 5 units. With every tool at its standard setting, every combination that meets the targets under Service Targets Only includes Vet connections. At stronger settings a few do without it. One is Escalate checks with Gate vendor updates at its stronger setting, for 5 units.

Under Service and Safety Targets and All Governance Targets, this case is not fully addressable with the available tools. Both levels ask you to close every failure pathway, among other targets.

Closing every failure pathway fits the budget. The cheapest way costs 9 of the 12 units: Gate record entries, Understand the system, and Vet connections. Understand the system costs 4 units at these levels. While it is on, Vet connections costs 2 instead of 3.

Every combination that closes every failure pathway includes all three. Vet connections and Understand the system together leave one pathway open: the rules writing determinations into the case record. With those two alone, the automated system is clearly helping the work.

Gate record entries closes that last pathway, and the system's help goes with it. No combination that closes every failure pathway leaves the automated system helping the work. The best leaves it not helping.

More money does not change that. With the budget set aside and every tool at its stronger setting, every failure pathway closes, and the automated system ends up hurting the work.

That is a finding about the deployment, not a gap in your approach. Here the system's help and its harm run through the same entry in the case record.