policyengine / policyengine-uk-old

Source code for PolicyEngine-UK

PolicyEngine

This repository contains the core infrastructure for policyengine.org. Namely:

• policyengine, a Python package which contains the server-side implementations, and
• policyengine-client, a React library containing high-level components to build the client-side interface.

Development

NOTE: requires Python 3.7

First, ensure you have pnpm installed: https://pnpm.io/installation.

Then, install using make install. Then, to debug the client, run make debug-client, or to debug the server, run make debug-server.

If your changes involve the server, change useLocalServer = false; to useLocalServer = true; in policyengine-client/src/countries/country.jsx. Otherwise, change usePolicyEngineOrgServer = false; to usePolicyEngineOrgServer = true; in policyengine-client/src/countries/country.jsx.

If you don't have access to the UK Family Resources Survey, you can still run the UK population-wide calculator on an anonymised version. To do that, instead of running make debug-server, run UK_SYNTHETIC=1 make debug-server

policyengine-uk-old's Issues

Change title

I'd suggest changing the title from UK Policy Engine by the UBI Center to PolicyEngineUK (subscript UK), like the slides

Then if there's social stuff and the UBI Center logo elsewhere e.g. upper right (#46) I think we can remove the UBI Center part.

Add caveats at the individual level

Potentially also link to other benefit calculators

Vertically center check marks in circles

They're a bit awkwardly low

Add caveats about FRS limitations to population results

Redirect policyengine.org to uk.policyengine.org

We might want a different page later on, e.g. with a form to request PolicyEngine in your country, but just redirect for ease right now

Get working in a normal (not incognito) window

Waterfall chart to decompose reform's impact on individuals' net income

Use a different icon than check if someone skips About you section

e.g. a dash. Here's how it looks when going straight from policy to Simulate on the population:

Augment instructions

e.g. from my experience, also needs notes on:

• export HOST=localhost
• Using the latest openfisca-uk-data, e.g. openfisca-uk-data frs save ~/frs_2018.h5 2018
• npm start has to be in a separate terminal
• To serve a pre-built site: sudo npm install -g serve and serve -s build

Remove UBI Center logo from graphs

URL not found when viewing situation after skipping page to enter your info

Here's what I did:

1. Specify policy reform (10/week child UBI)
2. Skip to Simulate on the population
3. Click See your results

Then it spins for 10 seconds and gives an empty screen.

Refreshing the page (https://uk.policyengine.org/situation-results?child_UBI=10) shows this error:

Remove families per household

Users found this very confusing. Can always bring it back with an "add family" button but unnecessary for now IMO.

`flask run` produces `Error: Could not import "server"`

I just updated openfisca-uk, and followed the instructions to run:

(base) mghenis@penguin:~/nikhilwoodruff/openfisca-uk-ui$ export FLASK_APP=server/server.py
(base) mghenis@penguin:~/nikhilwoodruff/openfisca-uk-ui$ flask run
 * Serving Flask app "server/server.py"
 * Environment: production
   WARNING: This is a development server. Do not use it in a production deployment.
   Use a production WSGI server instead.
 * Debug mode: off
Usage: flask run [OPTIONS]

Error: Could not import "server".

https://policyengine.org doesn't work

http://policyengine.org and http://uk.policyengine.org redirect appropriately to https://uk.policyengine.org, but https://policyengine.org doesn't.

Default to reform view in individual waterfall

e.g. I got confused why the UBI element was zero when I added a UBI, before realizing it's the baseline by default

Plotly has a bug such that changing the default selection doesn't change the data: plotly/plotly.py#3276

It could be set to play automatically, but that looks to be an html export thing rather than json: plotly/plotly.py#3332

Move/rename repo to UBICenter/uk-policy-engine

Enable caching with gcloud buckets

Not functional at the moment because in-memory caches are going to get wiped at every restart/not shared between multiple instances if demand is high

Change title of app to Policy Engine UK

With a little UBI Center logo?

Hide `See your results` button if user skipped `Describe your situation`

See also #26

www.policyengine.org doesn't work

Neither http://www.policyengine.org nor https://www.policyengine.org redirect appropriately

Remove sections with no parameters

Benefits, add them back later

Add waterfall reporting change to net income in individual page

The existing slider-waterfall is useful, but I think the first thing the user sees should mirror the first thing in the population graph: a decomposition of changes. This chart could be hidden if the policy reform doesn't affect them.

This would also make the default slider value issue in #71 less important if that becomes challenging.

Add a footer

e.g.

© 2021 The UBI Center. Let us know what you think! Email [email protected] or file an issue on GitHub.

Add a "spend extra funding on UBI" toggle parameter

Trying to guess a budget-neutral policy and then correcting is at least for me a very common use-case. It would save both the user and server time if we can avoid this double-usage.

Rename repo to policyengine-uk

To align with openfisca-uk and og-uk, and the app itself

Fix non-incognito mode errors

For some reason, the site only works in incognito. I suspect this is because of how we're directing requests to the static site using a 404 handler; that this is causing the browser to think static site requests are all the index.html, caching it and using the index.html file in place of static resources improperly.

Ensure GA works as best as possible

Specify units and period in "About you" boxes

e.g. this

should look like

Use hash routing

It seems GitHub pages doesn't work with the routing method used in the React App, and instead requires a HashRouter to be used (/#/population-results?..., rather than /population-results?). Without this, users currently can't just paste in links as the query parameter parsing doesn't work right now (though it does locally, just not on hosted GH pages).

Host the client app on GH pages

While we're waiting on further information as to how to host the server, we can host the client on GH pages

Senior UBI should say "at or above State Pension age"

(I'm assuming)

Make UI component for abolishing things clearer

I think it would be clearer if the abolish switches were either reversed (turn UC on/off) or if the color once activated is red instead of blue. Here's how it looks today:

Add threshold to additional rate threshold section

missing

Try removing description

The description is currently long and refers to stuff that users might not need to know, like OpenFisca (I think the disclaimers at the results page are the right place for this):

Welcome to the UBI Center's UK Policy Engine. Powered by the open-source microsimulation model OpenFisca-UK, this site allows you to experiment with different changes to how taxes and benefits are set in the United Kingdom, and simulate the results on people, families and households in the country.

I think the four numbers actually describe it well. Could we see what it looks like if that takes up the whole first row, with no description?

Consider writing out top-level numbers as takeaways

Here's what the summary statistics at the top currently look like:

This highlights the numbers well, but has a couple drawbacks IMO:

• Net cost is confusing
• Winner/loser share seems a bit awkward (I try to avoid "loser" in general)
• Could understate the connection between the number and its meaning

An alternative could be writing out the takeaways. Here's my shot at this (Figma):

Another example:

This is still awkward in a couple ways:

• No good way I'm aware of to clearly describe the budgetary impact
• I don't think we should color the inequality change (since it's somewhat partisan), but leaving it gray makes that choice hard to hide

But I think it could be quicker for users to absorb.

Add informative hover labels in charts

Specify alpha or beta in the title

Add button to go straight to population results

Skipping the household info page

Add a social preview

https://cards-dev.twitter.com/validator

Darken the net cost color in funding waterfall chart

So that net cost stands out. Alternatively, lighten the columns other than net cost.

Add intra-decile chart

Like this from the Lib Dem analysis:

Use policy as of the current date

e.g. for UC

Redesign navigation flow

Users currently navigate in two parts of the screen:

1. The upper right shows the progress

2. Navigation occurs in buttons below the policy "cart"

This was intended to act like a shopping cart flow, but given the multiple screens, I think we could streamline the interface by combining the progress tracking and navigation buttons.

Here's an example (I'm sure there's a more Ant-Designy way of doing it, especially the black to show the active screen), from the first screen (Figma):

This also reduces the amount of text, which I think is made unnecessary by the action-oriented buttons. Here's how they could all look:

@nikhilwoodruff I'm curious what you think.

Get population MTR graph working on uk.policyengine.org

It's currently set to 30% because of a memory error

Replace "Adult 1" / "Child 1" view

Users found it hard to understand how to add a child, since adding people only adds adults, until you change their age.

How about instead, the family overview tab asks (a) marital status (adds spouse if married) and (b) # kids. An adult record for family head is always present, but named "Head" instead of "Adult 1".

Round net cost consistently between text box and waterfall chart

600m vs 603m in https://uk.policyengine.org/population-results?personal_allowance=0&child_UBI=29&adult_UBI=29&senior_UBI=29

I think in this case it should be 603 in both places

`flask run` produces `ValueError: max() arg is an empty sequence`

I'm up to date on openfisca-uk, might I need to install or update something else?

(base) mghenis@penguin:~/nikhilwoodruff/openfisca-uk-ui$ export FLASK_APP=server/server.py
(base) mghenis@penguin:~/nikhilwoodruff/openfisca-uk-ui$ flask run
 * Serving Flask app "server/server.py"
 * Environment: production
   WARNING: This is a development server. Do not use it in a production deployment.
   Use a production WSGI server instead.
 * Debug mode: off
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "/home/mghenis/anaconda3/bin/flask", line 10, in <module>
    sys.exit(main())
  File "/home/mghenis/anaconda3/lib/python3.7/site-packages/flask/cli.py", line 967, in main
    cli.main(args=sys.argv[1:], prog_name="python -m flask" if as_module else None)
  File "/home/mghenis/anaconda3/lib/python3.7/site-packages/flask/cli.py", line 586, in main
    return super(FlaskGroup, self).main(*args, **kwargs)
  File "/home/mghenis/anaconda3/lib/python3.7/site-packages/click/core.py", line 782, in main
    rv = self.invoke(ctx)
  File "/home/mghenis/anaconda3/lib/python3.7/site-packages/click/core.py", line 1259, in invoke
    return _process_result(sub_ctx.command.invoke(sub_ctx))
  File "/home/mghenis/anaconda3/lib/python3.7/site-packages/click/core.py", line 1066, in invoke
    return ctx.invoke(self.callback, **ctx.params)
  File "/home/mghenis/anaconda3/lib/python3.7/site-packages/click/core.py", line 610, in invoke
    return callback(*args, **kwargs)
  File "/home/mghenis/anaconda3/lib/python3.7/site-packages/click/decorators.py", line 73, in new_func
    return ctx.invoke(f, obj, *args, **kwargs)
  File "/home/mghenis/anaconda3/lib/python3.7/site-packages/click/core.py", line 610, in invoke
    return callback(*args, **kwargs)
  File "/home/mghenis/anaconda3/lib/python3.7/site-packages/flask/cli.py", line 848, in run_command
    app = DispatchingApp(info.load_app, use_eager_loading=eager_loading)
  File "/home/mghenis/anaconda3/lib/python3.7/site-packages/flask/cli.py", line 305, in __init__
    self._load_unlocked()
  File "/home/mghenis/anaconda3/lib/python3.7/site-packages/flask/cli.py", line 330, in _load_unlocked
    self._app = rv = self.loader()
  File "/home/mghenis/anaconda3/lib/python3.7/site-packages/flask/cli.py", line 388, in load_app
    app = locate_app(self, import_name, name)
  File "/home/mghenis/anaconda3/lib/python3.7/site-packages/flask/cli.py", line 240, in locate_app
    __import__(module_name)
  File "/home/mghenis/nikhilwoodruff/openfisca-uk-ui/server/server.py", line 26, in <module>
    baseline = openfisca_uk.Microsimulation()
  File "/home/mghenis/PSLmodels/openfisca-uk/openfisca_uk/tools/simulation.py", line 219, in __init__
    self.year = max(dataset().years)
ValueError: max() arg is an empty sequence

Hide "Your situation" if user hasn't entered it

e.g. currently when the user skips from the policy section to simulating on the full UK, the household situation is still there (bottom right) with default characteristics:

Add social media icon/links

Upper right? Footer? Something also with the UBI Center full logo and link to ubicenter.org

Extend x-axis on net income and MTR charts to include specified household income

The max is currently 200k regardless of income. How about max(200k, income*2)? So for high earners the you are here dot (#59) will be centered.