tl;dr; Rules as Code is very interesting.
At the core is the notion that legal rules represent a logical way of making decisions and if you correctly annotate the law with a formal representation you can compile that representation into an executable. The executable itself isn’t a <legal decision> it is still subject to normal legal oversight and challenge.
Those executables can perform a whole set of different roles in the development of state systems, from benefit calculators, to providing actual calculation engines that can be embedded in tax or social security systems and critically can provide a shared reasoning ‘surface’ that lawyers, policy makers, service designers, delivery and in-service managers can use to iterate quickly and effectively.
Pia Andrews has a tremendous slide deck on the subject. Her work on delivery iterative policy development is also well worth your consideration.
It also has a route to building enormously powerful generative property tests which can dramatically rip costs out of major digital infrastructural problems - which is where I come in with my long-standing obsession with software testing.
The working paper is as technical as it needs to be, and as long. I have tried to keep the deep tech to the appendices, but hey!
Working Paper 1 on Data Structures and the Rule of Law is coming - and perhaps Working Paper 0 on the Locus Of Public Sector Reform. Homer started the Odysessy in the middle, went back to the beginning before getting to the end. If its good enough for him, its good enough for me.