CalWIN – the case management system supporting 18 counties – is launching a new Business Rules Engine, the first of many significant modernizations to help transform its system.

The implementation of the Business Rule Engine will allow program analysts and county experts to make changes quickly to the system when federal, state and county policy changes occur.  

CalWIN is an automated and integrated case management system that provides eligibility determination, benefit calculation, and benefits enrollment.  The system ensures more than 4.4 million people receive their benefits each month.

The Business Rules Engine implementation is part of the larger NextGen CalWIN transformation project. This Business Rules Engine project will produce a single source of business rules that drive eligibility.  This project is expected to reduce code complexity and enable quicker changes. Cost savings are expected through the identification and documentation of natural language business rules, the separation of business rules from program logic flow and direct traceability back to federal, state and county regulations.

Business rules change more frequently than other application code. Externalization of business rules allows business users to clearly understand and articulate potential changes to business functionality. Other advantages include:

• Reduction in errors by applying standards to business rules modeling and implementation.
• Improved communication between business and application owners which leads to greater accuracy in the application’s implementation of federal/state/county regulations.
• Improvement in business rule transparency and visibility by separating business rules from application logic flow.
• Rules can be analyzed “one at a time” and allow the engine to handle interoperability between rules.
• Ability to unite or separate control of business logic to third parties. The system as a whole becomes more adaptable with business rules that can be changed dynamically
• Reduction in the potential for cascading side effects.