The code is the policy: We’d walk through a state’s automatic renewal rules as they were actually encoded in the software and use data to find where enrollees were falling out unnecessarily. Many states had years of policy miscommunications and vendor mistakes baked into their systems and never had the capacity to take a second look. We hosted marathon meetings that brought together everyone from state policy directors to back office IT staff which revealed dozens of opportunities to make improvements. “No, you should not be multiplying quarterly income by 12 to calculate annual income.” “Yes, you can use SNAP data.” “No, you should not deny children because their parents are ineligible.”