About & methodology

MyEligible is maintained as an independent public-interest project. For Aotearoa New Zealand, we are building a calm way to see which support programmes may be worth exploring, understand how they interact, and follow links to official information.

Results and calculators are planning aids. Official eligibility and payment decisions are made by the responsible government agency.

Every programme in this preview links to an official government or legislative source. Those sources, not MyEligible and not any earlier civic-tech prototype, remain the canonical reference for rates, criteria, and application processes.

We model eligibility from published rules, effective dates, and agency guidance. When a rule cannot yet be resolved from your answers, we say so plainly instead of guessing.

Programme names, administering agencies, and review dates are tracked in our internal registry. If you spot a mismatch with an official page, please tell us so we can correct it.

Aotearoa New Zealand has a strong tradition of civic technology, rules-as-code, and trusted community advice. MyEligible is an independent rebuild. We studied these projects to understand problems worth solving: not to copy their text, design, rules, or code, and not to suggest any relationship beyond respectful learning.

None of the organisations below partnered with, endorsed, or contributed to MyEligible. Links are provided so you can explore the original work.

• OpenFisca Aotearoa

  What we learned

  • How New Zealand social security law can be expressed as transparent, testable rules rather than opaque spreadsheets.
  • Patterns for separating entitlement, rate, reduction, and payable variables when modelling benefits.
  • The value of publishing legislative logic openly so people can see what assumptions a calculator makes.

• BenefitMe and the Digital Aotearoa Collective

  What we learned

  • That a citizen-facing navigator can start from the Social Security Act itself and still speak in plain language.
  • How important it is to signpost trusted human advice when someone may not qualify for a benefit.
  • Early lessons about reducing interpretation barriers for people who are unsure of their rights.

• Citizens Advice Bureau New Zealand

  What we learned

  • How independent, community-based advice helps people understand rights and obligations without pressure from government.
  • Why clear referral pathways matter when someone needs advocacy, budgeting help, or legal information.
  • The standard of warmth and confidentiality people should expect when seeking support.

• SmartStart and the Service Innovation Lab lineage

  What we learned

  • Life-event navigation: meeting people where they are (for example, expecting a child) instead of forcing them to learn agency structures first.
  • The Financial Help Checker as a practical benchmark for which mainstream programmes belong in a first-pass directory.
  • Whole-of-government service design thinking that later civic projects, including ours, can learn from without duplicating government services.

MyEligible recognises Māori as tangata whenua of Aotearoa New Zealand and the enduring importance of Te Tiriti o Waitangi. We aim to use te reo Māori, Māori names, and official place names accurately and respectfully.

MyEligible is not affiliated with or endorsed by any government agency, political party, or civic-tech project listed on this page.

We do not use logos from other organisations without permission. Programme descriptions are written in our own words and checked against official sources.