Eligibility Decision
What It Is
An eligibility decision is the result of asking whether a person or organization qualifies in a particular context. Eligible and ineligible express a determined answer. Indeterminate means the engine lacks a dependable answer, perhaps because a subject is absent, a fact is missing or a provider fails. The use’s policy turns that uncertainty into the outcome the consumer can act on. Keeping state and outcome separate prevents a fallback denial from being mistaken for a successful negative evaluation.
Each result identifies the expression and date used and carries reasons. Explanation detail varies with the caller. Many results serve display requests and are never retained; consequential decisions and a sample of display answers become historical records. The stored result allows support to examine what happened rather than rerun today’s expression against today’s data.
What It Is Not
A decision does not itself grant permission or write a business entitlement. Those actions belong to the consumer. A population run is a collection of evaluations with aggregate results, not a different eligibility state. An author’s trial produces an answer for inspection without establishing a historical decision record.
How It Is Used
Applications request answers for their registered uses, individually or in batches. Support readers inspect retained answers to understand a refusal and the expression behind it. Authors use population work and simulations to assess reach before a change. Operators observe decision measurements for rising uncertainty. Display caching supports frequent reads, but callers must choose the appropriate consistency when the answer authorizes work or participates in a transaction.
Its Facets
Qualification and outcome. The three states remain separate from denial, admission with review or deferral under policy. Distinguishing a known answer from a failure fallback.
Explanation. Reason codes and permitted explanation levels describe the result with readable labels. Giving members, support and authors appropriate detail.
Subject and date. The question names a workspace subject and the day for version and date resolution. Evaluating the intended record in the intended temporal context.
Consistency choice. Display, authorization and transactional modes have different freshness and recording needs. Choosing an answer suitable for presentation or consequential action.
Retained history. An append-only record preserves important answers in monthly storage. Investigating decisions within the retention period.
Display cache. Short-lived answers reduce repeated evaluation and can be invalidated by release changes. Serving repeated display questions efficiently.
Population work. Durable jobs produce counts, subject pages, comparisons and exports for one version. Understanding the records a definition covers.
Draft impact. A simulation compares a draft with the published expression over relevant subjects. Reviewing likely gains, losses and dependent uses before publication.
How It Relates
The rule supplies the qualification expression, and the use supplies its context and policy. Security consumes answers for its own access decisions and derived-role work. Population jobs apply the same evaluation machinery across records and contribute simulation gains to recheck requests. Source records remain owned by the applications that register their conditions.
What It Could Become
The product should settle the permission to enumerate qualifying people before approving population planning. Run discovery, cancellation and cleanup also need attention. Display-record persistence can fail after an answer returns, so audit needs should account for that limit. A published consumer-process evaluator and future operational views could make results easier to use without overstating what exists now.