Benefit Decision Toolkit (including the Philly Property Tax Relief Screener)

Use DMN and FEEL to create APIs and Screeners for public benefit rules.

Motivation

The project's founders have many years of experience in a now-defunct Philadelphia nonprofit that was dedicated to helping expand access to public benefits like SNAP and Medicaid.

One crucial ingredient for expanding benefits access is helping people to quickly assess their eligibility for the programs.

This project aims to make it easier to create these assessment tools, to the point where it can be done by savvy subject matter experts with little-to-no formal software coding training.

The Philly Property Tax Relief Screener

As a proof of concept, we've built an API and a screener for several of the property tax relief benefits in Philadelphia.

You can interact with the screener yourself here.

We intend to improve this screener to the point where it is easy to use by the general public. We also intend use what we have learned building it to further the overall project goal of making additional screeners for other benefits easier to build.

User-Facing Technologies

Decision Model and Notation (DMN) is used to define the logic of the screener forms.

Form JS is used to define the user interface of the screener forms.

Developer-Facing Technologies

Quarkus is used to serve APIs.

Solid JS is used to build the frontend of the web app.

Contributing

Dropping us a line in our Slack channel is a good first step! Our two initial founders are definitely challenged when it comes to frontend/UX concerns, so help in those areas would be especially appreciated! Thanks!