OPA is not just for the public sector - that is just its history! Oracle Policy Automation consists of two modules (Policy Automation and Policy Modelling) and is a natural-language, rule-authoring environment that is fully integrated with the Microsoft Office suite.

You can view live examples of OPA in action, because it has been around for almost 20 years! Government agencies around the world have been using OPA to remove circular references in legislation, create what if scenario's, and ensure that public agencies adhere to legislation for processing otherwise complex cases.

A local example is the Australian Immigration Office, where OPA is used to capture Visa applications online. http://www.immi.gov.au/visawizard/.

The Immigration Visa Wizard asks the applicant a series of simple questions, the responses to which are then fed directly into the rules engine which checks the responses off against the relevant current legislation. Depending on the responses provided the Visa Wizard will provide an answer as to whether or not the applicant is likely to succeed - and in situations where an applicant is likely to be denied it will provide the exact reasons why an application would be denied citing the relevant legislation.

OPA enables corporations to maintain current legal customer communications and handling policies when the law is constantly changing. OPA aids in the management of large numbers of customers, when it is essential that those customers are handled and communicated with within the guidelines of the law - such as that associated with a tax office, insurance, banking and finance, or telecommunications.

• Easily manage changing policy rules and quickly determine applicant eligibility for accounts, or insurance policies, or even special offers.
• Ensure accurate and lawful determination against complex policies
• Reduce reliance on technical staff and adjust rules rapidly by allowing immigration experts to author rules in natural language
• Simplify rules by realizing the impact of changes to policy with what-if analysis (including legal/regulatory changes)
• Empower applicants with information and reduce call center costs through self-guided questionnaires that directly reference legislation.
• Rapid transformation of policy documents and manuals into executable form Microsoft Office integration for rule authoring and maintenance
• Current parsers include English, Danish, Swedish, and Dutch
• Business user regression testing and debugging
• What-if analysis for multiple policy change scenarios