Closing the gap between what public programs promise and what they deliver.
Ex Machina Solutions works with government agencies, nonprofits, funders, and civic technology organizations across the safety net and food systems.
Principal: Joël McClurg, twenty years inside SNAP administration, food systems, and state and federal policy.
Available for long- and short-term engagements.
Capabilities
Program operations and compliance, policy and legislative strategy, organizational capacity, data analysis, and the responsible use of emerging technology inside public systems.
SNAP & safety-net program operations
- Quality control and payment error rate reduction
- Work requirements, recertification, and procedural-closure mechanics
- State compliance oversight (64 Colorado counties) and federal liaison experience with USDA FNS
- Eligibility operations across programs, including a SNAP, Medicaid, and WIC co-enrollment demonstration
Policy, coalitions & legislative strategy
- Designed and passed state legislation, including $500K for Colorado-grown food in emergency feeding
- Statewide policy communications and campaign strategy
- Coalition building and stakeholder navigation across agencies, advocates, and funders
- Federal relationships and grant-funded policy demonstrations
Organizational capacity & program development
- Executive leadership of a statewide organization with a $5–9M budget
- Technical assistance to state and local agencies and nonprofits
- Training, playbooks, and implementation tools that outlast the engagement
- Program design and funding strategy, from pilots to multi-year grants
Data analysis & decision support
- State-by-state policy analyses and local impact estimation
- Public-facing data tools, dashboards, and open catalogues
- Root-cause analysis of program metrics, including payment error rates
- Translating analysis into decisions program leadership can act on
Emerging technology for public programs
- AI Safety Net Residency at Propel: public-private partnerships and AI strategy for benefit programs
- Rapid prototyping of diagnostic and analysis tools
- Practical guidance on where AI helps public systems, where it fails, and how to tell the difference
- Technology evaluation and procurement support grounded in program reality
Selected work
Public examples. Client engagements are typically not published.
SNAP Payment Error Rates, FY2025
A state-by-state analysis of USDA's FY2025 payment error rates and the new cost-share penalty, showing what the error rate measures: administrative capacity and program access, not fraud.
H.R.1 SNAP Impact Estimator
A local impact estimator: households losing food assistance, benefit dollars leaving the local economy, and jobs at risk, measured against a fixed October 2025 pre-implementation baseline.
SNAP State Form Audit
An open catalogue of every application, recertification, change-reporting, and verification form published to SNAP applicants and recipients.
Engagements
Ex Machina Solutions takes on long- and short-term engagements: diagnostics and assessments, embedded sprint-team roles, contributing-expert work, and standing advisory arrangements. A typical diagnostic starts with a conversation about something that isn't landing right and ends with a written analysis leadership can act on, with implementation support scoped case by case.
If your agency or organization is facing something in these areas, the fastest way to find out whether this is a fit is a short conversation.