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Business purpose

eRegulations is a web application that reduces the time and effort required for Medicaid and CHIP staff to find, read, and analyze relevant statute, regulations, guidance, internal policy reference materials, and other policy information related to to Medicaid and CHIP. By providing a comprehensive and easy-to-use policy reference tool with powerful cross-referencing and search options, this application radically improves the speed and efficiency of work such as:

• Drafting and reviewing drafts of proposed rules, guidance, technical assistance, and other policy materials
• Reviewing and responding to submissions from state Medicaid and CHIP agencies, such as State Plan Amendments
• Answering technical assistance questions from state Medicaid and CHIP agencies
• Training staff, including new staff and transfers

The Center for Medicaid & CHIP Services started this project in September 2020 because existing resources for regulatory and subregulatory research were not meeting the needs of CMCS staff, especially being able to find all relevant policy materials for a particular topic without having to spend significant time and effort searching for and compiling resources.

Key ways that CMCS eRegulations is different from existing services and resources:

• Brings many kinds of related policy resources into context with each other, instead of being the publisher of only a specific category of policy information
• Focus on validated CMCS requirements, not a general publisher of information that has to serve the basic needs of a wide range of agencies

CMCS staff adopt eRegulations as part of their work because they decide it helps them find what they need.

Cost-effectiveness

This instance of eRegulations is based on open source software developed by CFPB and GSA - for another example, see ATF eRegulations. This code remains open source, so it is free for reuse and adaptation by government agencies and the public, including businesses. It minimizes cost of setup, maintenance, and operation through techniques including:

• Maximizing use of mature open source software packages, such as PostgreSQL, Django, and Vue.js
• Serverless architecture on AWS, using Lambda, RDS, and S3
• GitHub Actions (free for open source projects) with automated tests and deployment
• Using public APIs from eCFR, the Federal Register, and GovInfo.gov

What's on this wiki?

Our team puts notes and documentation into this wiki to help us maintain a shared understanding of our work, including what we've done and why. It's public in case anything in here is helpful to other teams, including anyone who may be interested in reusing this code.

Previous versions of eRegulations

Notes from other teams that worked on earlier iterations of the eRegulations open source code:

• ATF eRegulations research
• OMB eRegulations research
• eRegulations Notice & Comment research