The Affordable Care Act's enactment in 2010 spurred the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare (IDHW) to overhaul its service delivery mechanisms, including idalink, leveraging the 90-10 federal funding for new technology adoption. The pre-existing eligibility infrastructure of IDHW was fragmented across various applications, leading to high maintenance costs and inefficiencies due to redundant data handling. This fragmentation also complicated the application process for users, necessitating repeated entry of the same information across different platforms.
In response, GovWebworks spearheaded the development of the idalink web portal, aligning with IDHW's preference for open-source technology. The portal was designed to streamline the eligibility evaluation process, enabling applicants to easily assess potential benefits. The launch of Idalink was met with positive feedback from both users and IDHW, highlighting the portal's user-friendly interface and efficient system response times. This improvement significantly simplified the benefits re-evaluation process, aligning with the goal to make online re-evaluation a more convenient option than traditional methods, thereby reducing the workload on IDHW staff.