Reviewer: Korey Klein, Director of Technology and Data, Ballmer Group
Date: August 8, 2025
Application ID: PolicyEngine-Policy-Library-PBIF-2025
This application presents a sophisticated technical solution to a well-documented infrastructure problem. The team demonstrates deep understanding of both the technical challenges and government data ecosystem. The approach is architecturally sound with proven components, though some scaling assumptions need validation. Strong recommendation for funding with specific technical milestones.
| Dimension | Score | Rationale |
|---|---|---|
| Impact | 8/10 | Clear value proposition with measurable outcomes |
| Technical Feasibility | 9.5/10 | Excellent architecture, proven team, realistic implementation |
| Responsible AI | 8.5/10 | Strong technical safeguards and transparency commitments |
| Strategic Fit | 8.5/10 | Addresses critical government data infrastructure gap |
| Scalability | 8/10 | Good technical scalability, some questions on operational scaling |
Overall Score: 8.4/10
- Git + LFS: Excellent choice for version control and large file management. GitHub's LFS handles PDFs efficiently and provides built-in collaboration workflows.
- AI Integration: Claude/GPT-4 for extraction is current best practice. Human-in-the-loop validation addresses hallucination risks appropriately.
- Web Archiving: Browsertrix/WARC format follows library science standards. This is the right approach for preserving dynamic web content.
- Search Infrastructure: OpenSearch is battle-tested for large document collections.
The permanent source_id approach is exactly what's needed. Breaking the dependency on fragile direct links is the core value proposition. RESTful design with stable identifiers follows best practices.
"No integration required" is smart positioning. Crawling public websites avoids bureaucratic obstacles while still providing optional API integration for progressive agencies. 508 compliance commitment demonstrates understanding of government requirements.
Concern: No discussion of crawling frequency, rate limiting, or website impact.
Recommendation:
- Implement respectful crawling (robots.txt compliance, rate limiting)
- Document crawling policies publicly
- Consider partnerships with agencies for direct data feeds where possible
Concern: 100,000+ documents with version history could generate substantial LFS costs.
Recommendation:
- Provide detailed storage cost modeling
- Consider tiered storage (hot/warm/cold) for historical versions
- Evaluate alternatives like IPFS for distributed storage
Concern: Full-text search across 100k+ documents with version history requires careful optimization.
Recommendation:
- Include performance benchmarking in technical milestones
- Plan for search result ranking and relevance tuning
- Consider document chunking strategies for large files
Using Git repositories per jurisdiction is brilliant:
- Natural branching for policy changes over time
- Built-in collaboration workflows for human review
- Distributed backup and mirrors
- Community contribution pathways
Complete transparency builds trust and enables community contributions. MIT licensing appropriate for infrastructure project.
Stable API with permanent identifiers solves the core problem elegantly. Multiple format support (JSON, XML, CSV) serves diverse use cases.
Recommendation: Adopt or develop standardized metadata schema for policy documents. Consider Dublin Core extensions or custom schema for policy-specific fields (jurisdiction, program, effective dates, etc.).
Recommendation:
- Automated quality checks for document completeness
- Standardized tagging for document types
- Confidence scores for AI-extracted metadata
Recommendation: Comprehensive monitoring of:
- API response times and availability
- Crawling success rates
- Storage utilization trends
- User engagement patterns
The team demonstrates excellent understanding of government technology challenges:
- Document preservation problems are real and urgent
- Link rot affects mission-critical systems
- Agencies lack resources for proper information architecture
- Commercial dependencies (CaseText example) create systemic risk
The non-invasive approach is strategically sound:
- Avoids procurement complications
- Reduces implementation barriers
- Provides value immediately
- Creates pathway for deeper integration over time
- Proactive Outreach: Engage with agency IT and records management teams early
- Compliance Documentation: Provide clear documentation of data handling practices
- Partnership Opportunities: Identify progressive agencies for pilot partnerships
- Standards Alignment: Ensure compatibility with emerging government data standards
Strong Points:
- Git-based architecture naturally distributes across repositories
- API can be replicated and load-balanced
- OpenSearch clusters scale effectively
- Document processing can be parallelized
Scaling Bottlenecks:
- Human review workflow may become bottleneck at scale
- Crawling infrastructure needs careful resource planning
- Cross-repository search complexity increases with jurisdiction count
- Automated Review Pipeline: Develop ML models to prioritize documents needing human review
- Federation Strategy: Plan for federated search across jurisdiction repositories
- Caching Layer: Implement aggressive caching for frequently accessed documents
- Resource Planning: Model infrastructure costs at different usage scales
The 12-month timeline is aggressive but achievable given the team's experience:
- Q3 2025: Foundation work (3 months) - appropriate for infrastructure setup
- Q4 2025: Initial scale (6 months) - reasonable for 20 states
- Q1 2026: Production deployment (9 months) - timeline for 40 states seems optimistic
- Q2 2026: Full coverage (12 months) - aggressive but possible
Recommend adding:
- Monthly technical reviews with external advisors
- Quarterly architecture reviews as scale increases
- Contingency planning for major technical challenges
- Performance benchmarking at each milestone
$498,000 for Year 1 is reasonable for this scope:
Appropriate allocation for infrastructure project. 2.5 FTE seems right for:
- Lead Engineer (infrastructure, API development)
- ML Engineer (AI crawling, document processing)
- Policy Analyst (domain expertise, quality assurance)
Concern: May be underestimated for 100k+ documents with version history.
Recommendation: Increase to $25-30k and provide detailed cost modeling.
- Cloud-First Architecture: Leverage managed services (GitHub, cloud search, etc.)
- Infrastructure as Code: All infrastructure version-controlled and reproducible
- Monitoring & Alerting: Comprehensive observability from day one
- Security Review: Third-party security assessment before production
-
Crawling Blocked: Some agencies may block automated crawling
- Mitigation: Respectful crawling practices, direct partnerships
-
Storage Costs: Document volume may exceed projections
- Mitigation: Tiered storage, cost monitoring, optimization
-
Performance Degradation: Search/API performance at scale
- Mitigation: Load testing, optimization, caching strategies
-
Human Review Bottleneck: Manual review may not scale
- Mitigation: Automated prioritization, community contributions
-
Team Scaling: Technical team may need expansion
- Mitigation: Plan for additional hires in Year 2
This application represents exactly the kind of technical infrastructure investment that creates lasting impact. The team demonstrates exceptional technical competence, the architecture is sound, and the implementation plan is realistic.
The technical approach solves real problems that affect millions of people. The permanent source_id concept alone justifies the investment by breaking dependency on fragile government links.
Conditions for funding:
- Detailed storage cost modeling and monitoring plan
- Monthly technical milestone reviews
- Third-party security assessment before production
- Performance benchmarking framework
- Community contribution guidelines and tools
This project has the potential to become critical infrastructure for the entire benefits ecosystem. The technical foundation is solid, and the team has the expertise to execute successfully.
Specific Technical Recommendations:
- Add infrastructure cost monitoring and alerting
- Implement automated document quality scoring
- Plan for federated search architecture from the start
- Establish technical advisory board with government IT expertise
Total Recommendation Score: 8.4/10 - FUND