Expert Calculator for benefits
and allowances
in New Zealand
By Howard Proops of Venturi Limited, New Zealand.
The New Zealand Social Welfare Department, which is now called
Work and Income New Zealand - WINZ - retained Venturi to build an
Expert Calculator for use by Income Support staff who deal with
questions of eligibility, allowances and benefit amounts. While
the legislators strive to make the benefits, allowances and taxes
as simple to calculate as possible, the net result, in a typical
case, is an extremely complex calculation. Typically, an officer
of the department will have a folder with 50 pages of notes and
rates to guide them through the calculation.
This complexity denied the department the ability to give quick
consistent advice, either over the phone or at the counter. Undoubtedly,
clients were frustrated by the delays and errors in these manual
calculations. The XpertRule calculator gives the officer
a simple interface to enter the clients circumstances and calculate
the eligible benefits, allowances and amounts, including printing
an advice note. The speed of this calculator also allows advice
to be given by telephone operators, now a major part of the Departments
new strategy. The calculator also provides an explanation of the
calculation.
Internally the calculator is very complex. The "cocktail" of robust
rule-management techniques built into XpertRule make the system
easily maintainable by an experienced programmer. In the opinion
of the author the same would not be true of tools like Visual Basic
or C++ where the lack of data and process integrity could lead to
an unstable application.
In September 1997 the Calculator was given the "Best Software"
award by the department, against competition from a Workflow system,
Adobe Acrobat documentation system and Intranet. The award was based
on a vote by the 3000 front office staff who use the software.
The Calculator opened up one more door for Social Welfare. Using
the connectivity capabilities of XpertRule, the calculator connects
to the mainframe, allowing current client information to be loaded
into the calculator as the basis for "what if" calculations with
the client.
EDITORS NOTE Venturi have been developing systems using XpertRule
for several years. Howard Proops can be contacted at Venturi Limited.
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