Case USA29: How a State Welfare Agency Branded Policy Rule Migration as Enterprise Architecture Innovation

Overview:

This case is part of our 100-diagnostic series showing rule migration projects mislabeled as EA change.

A welfare agency moved eligibility rules into a new engine, cutting some manual checks — but policy, appeals, and reporting processes stayed siloed.

P1–P6 Insight Preview: 

Rule migration improved components (P4) and process fragments (P2), but lacked enterprise governance (P1) and system behavior modeling (P3).

Business ops (P6) still managed edge cases manually; tech ops (P6) worked rule overrides offline.

Role Disconnects:

1. CEO/Director: “Eligibility is now automated” — but exceptions stall the pipeline.
   

2. CIO: “Rules live in one place” — yet interpretation varies by program.
   

3. Sales Head (Programs): “Processing time is down” — until appeals spike.
   

4. Chief EA: “We moved the rules, not the architecture.”
   

5. Head of Policy Administration: “I still track half my exceptions in spreadsheets.”

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