SNAP, Medicaid, TANF, WIC, housing assistance, childcare subsidies, energy assistance, and disability services — managed through a single integrated platform that serves citizens applying for help, caseworkers processing applications, agency administrators configuring programs, and partner organizations exchanging data. One application. One case record. One view of every family's needs.
A mother applies for SNAP. She fills out a 28-page application, submits pay stubs, waits 30 days, attends an interview, and is approved. Then she learns she might qualify for Medicaid. She starts over. New application. New documents. New interview. New 30-day wait. Then WIC. Then childcare assistance. Then energy assistance. Five programs. Five applications. Five sets of documents. Five interviews. Five waiting periods. And 42% of people who qualify for benefits never receive them — because the system is too hard to navigate.
Arbiter Commonwealth replaces the fragmented, program-siloed, COBOL-powered eligibility systems that 35 states still operate with a single integrated platform. One application asks every question once. One rules engine determines eligibility across all programs simultaneously. One case record connects every benefit, every document, every interaction, and every outcome for every family. Citizens see a simple, mobile-first application. Caseworkers see a unified dashboard. Administrators see real-time program analytics. And every eligible family receives every benefit they qualify for — because the system was designed to find eligibility, not create barriers.
From the citizen applying on a phone to the legislator tracking program outcomes — Commonwealth serves every stakeholder through purpose-built interfaces on a shared data model.
Commonwealth manages the complete benefits lifecycle — from first application through ongoing case management, recertification, and program outcomes tracking.
The fundamental problem in government benefits is program fragmentation. Each program has its own application, its own eligibility rules, its own verification requirements, and its own case management system. A family that qualifies for SNAP almost certainly qualifies for Medicaid and may qualify for TANF, WIC, childcare assistance, and energy assistance — but discovering and applying for each program is a separate burden. Commonwealth's integrated eligibility engine determines qualification across all configured programs from a single set of household data. The rules engine processes federal regulations, state-specific policies, and categorical eligibility criteria simultaneously — producing a comprehensive eligibility determination that shows every program the household qualifies for, every benefit amount, and every verification requirement — in under two minutes.
A caseworker managing 400 cases across 3 separate systems spends more time navigating software than helping families. Commonwealth provides a single case record per household that shows every program enrollment, every pending action, every upcoming renewal, every interaction history, and every document on file. The workflow engine automatically assigns tasks based on urgency, deadline, caseworker specialization, and workload balance. Interview scheduling is automated with client self-service booking. Renewal reminders are sent proactively — via text, email, or mail — with pre-populated forms that only require confirmation of unchanged information. AI flags cases at risk of churn (benefits lapse due to missed renewal) and prioritizes outreach before deadlines pass.
The application is the front door to the benefits system — and for most states, that front door is a 28-page PDF form written in bureaucratic language, available only in English and Spanish, that requires a printer, a scanner, and a trip to a government office. Commonwealth's citizen portal is mobile-first: designed for the phone that 97% of benefits applicants already carry. The application uses plain language (8th grade reading level), asks each question once regardless of how many programs the citizen is applying for, allows document upload from a phone camera with AI-powered document classification, saves progress automatically (applicants can return and resume), and provides real-time status tracking with push notifications at every stage. Available in 20+ languages with full WCAG 2.1 AA accessibility compliance.
Document verification is the single biggest bottleneck in benefits processing. Citizens submit pay stubs, tax returns, utility bills, lease agreements, birth certificates, and immigration documents — often blurry phone photos of crumpled paper. Caseworkers manually review each document, extract relevant data, and cross-reference against eligibility criteria. Commonwealth automates the majority of this work: AI classifies uploaded documents by type, extracts key data fields (income amounts, dates, household members), and cross-references against federal data hubs — IRS income verification, SSA benefit verification, DHS immigration status, and state vital records. When automated verification confirms the applicant's self-reported data, the case moves forward without manual review. When discrepancies are found, the system flags the specific data point for caseworker attention — not the entire application.
When the federal government changes SNAP income thresholds or a state legislature modifies TANF work requirements, legacy systems require months of developer time to update the eligibility logic buried in COBOL code that was written decades ago. Commonwealth's rules engine separates policy from code: eligibility criteria, income thresholds, categorical rules, deduction tables, benefit calculations, and recertification schedules are configured through a visual, no-code interface by policy administrators — not programmed by developers. The system maintains a complete version history of every rule change, enabling audit trail compliance and the ability to reconstruct historical eligibility determinations under prior rule sets. When rules change, the system can automatically re-evaluate affected cases and notify families of changes to their benefits.
Benefits do not exist in isolation — they connect to healthcare providers who need to verify Medicaid enrollment, employers who provide income data for eligibility determination, housing authorities who manage voucher allocation, childcare providers who report attendance for subsidy payments, and community organizations who refer families to programs they may not know about. Commonwealth provides an API-first partner network that enables real-time data exchange with every stakeholder in the benefits ecosystem. Healthcare providers verify Medicaid enrollment instantly. Employers submit income verification electronically. Housing authorities receive voucher authorizations in real time. Community-based organizations submit referrals directly into the case management system. Every data exchange is logged, consent-tracked, and compliant with federal privacy regulations.
Government benefits programs generate enormous amounts of data — application volumes, processing times, approval rates, benefit amounts, renewal rates, churn patterns, and demographic distributions. But most legacy systems can barely produce a monthly report, let alone enable real-time program management. Commonwealth provides comprehensive analytics at every level: caseworker productivity dashboards, program enrollment trend analysis, geographic coverage mapping, demographic equity analysis, processing bottleneck identification, and predictive modeling for caseload forecasting and budget planning. The system identifies populations that are likely eligible but not enrolled — enabling proactive outreach campaigns that close the 42% enrollment gap. Legislators and oversight bodies access aggregate, anonymized program performance dashboards that demonstrate outcomes and justify funding.
Federal benefits programs require extensive reporting to CMS (Medicaid), FNS (SNAP), ACF (TANF/childcare), and HUD (housing). States that fail quality control reviews face fiscal sanctions — sometimes tens of millions of dollars in penalties. Legacy systems produce reports that require weeks of manual validation, correction, and formatting. Commonwealth generates all required federal reports automatically from the live case data — with built-in quality assurance validation that catches errors before submission. SNAP Quality Control sampling is automated. Medicaid Eligibility Quality Control (MEQC) reviews are supported with instant case documentation retrieval. TANF data reporting meets ACF specifications without manual reformatting. The system maintains a complete audit trail of every eligibility determination, ensuring that any federal review can be supported with immediate documentation.
A state health and human services agency serving 2.4 million beneficiaries across SNAP, Medicaid, TANF, WIC, childcare assistance, and LIHEAP replaced their 40-year-old COBOL eligibility system with Commonwealth. The integrated application replaced five separate forms. Processing time dropped from 30 days to 7. Cross-program enrollment increased 28% because the system automatically identified eligibility for programs families hadn't applied for. The mobile application achieved an 89% completion rate — compared to 34% for the legacy paper/PDF process. Caseworker capacity increased 40% through workflow automation, enabling the agency to absorb a 15% caseload increase without hiring additional staff.
During the post-COVID Medicaid continuous enrollment unwinding, a large county social services agency faced 340,000 recertifications in 90 days. Legacy systems in other states saw coverage loss rates of 18-25% — millions of people losing Medicaid not because they were ineligible but because they didn't complete the renewal process. Commonwealth's automated renewal engine pre-populated recertification forms with data from federal hubs, sent proactive text/email/mail reminders in the recipient's preferred language, and enabled one-click renewal for families whose circumstances hadn't changed. Coverage loss rate: 4%. The lowest in the state's history. Every family that lost coverage was genuinely ineligible — not lost to administrative burden.
A consortium of 12 rural counties deployed Commonwealth to replace a shared legacy system that required in-person office visits for application and recertification. Many eligible families lived 45+ minutes from the nearest office and could not take time off work. The mobile-first citizen portal eliminated the in-person requirement entirely. In the first year, 14,000 families who had never previously applied for benefits submitted applications — and 11,200 were approved for at least one program. Average benefit per newly enrolled family: $4,800 annually. Community health outcomes improved as 8,400 previously uninsured adults gained Medicaid coverage. The total economic impact of benefits flowing into the 12-county region: $54 million annually.
I have been a caseworker for nineteen years. In nineteen years, I have never been able to look at one screen and see everything about a family — every program, every document, every interaction, every benefit. I used to have three systems open, a paper file, and a spreadsheet. Now I have one screen. One case record. When a mother calls, I can see her SNAP status, her Medicaid enrollment, her childcare subsidy, and her housing voucher waitlist position — all at once. I can actually help her. Not transfer her. Not tell her to call another number. Help her.
The Medicaid unwinding was the most terrifying thing I have faced in twenty years of public health administration. 340,000 recertifications in 90 days. Other states were losing 18, 20, 25 percent of their Medicaid population — people who were still eligible but fell through the cracks of manual renewal processes. Commonwealth's automated renewal system pre-populated the forms, texted reminders in six languages, and let people renew with one click on their phone. Our coverage loss rate was 4 percent. Four percent. Every person who lost coverage was verified ineligible. We did not lose a single eligible family to administrative burden. That is what this platform is for.
We had families driving 45 minutes each way to our office, taking a day off work they could not afford, to submit a piece of paper they could have photographed on their phone. We knew they were out there — the data showed eligible populations in every corner of our 12-county region. But our system required an in-person visit. Commonwealth removed that barrier entirely. In the first year, 14,000 families who had never applied for any benefit submitted applications from their phones. Fourteen thousand families who were eligible, who needed help, and who the system had been designed to exclude through inconvenience. We found them. And $54 million in annual benefits is now flowing into communities that were invisible to the old system.
Request a platform briefing — including a demonstration of integrated eligibility, the citizen portal, caseworker dashboard, and real-time program analytics.