Dipp AIDipp AI

Case study · Government & Public Sector

A benefits agency gave 2,900 caseworkers agent authority without giving away the record

Non-human identities outnumbered staff 144 to 1. Role-scoped authority made every one of them answer to a caseworker who could be named.

State benefits agency · 2,900 caseworkers · published September 16, 2026

Download the PDFApply for early access

144:1 → 1:1

effective non-human to human authority ratio

every agent identity derives from one named human

0

agent actions outside the directing caseworker's scope

11 min

median time from HR role change to full credential revocation

previously 6–9 weeks

2,900

caseworkers delegating without expanding their own privileges

Summary

A state benefits agency wanted caseworkers to delegate eligibility research to agents without delegating their statutory authority. Orcher bound agent action to the caseworker's role and scope, so an agent could never act outside the entitlements of the person who directed it — and every action named that person.

Orcher components enforced

Solution: Identity & role-scoped authority

The situation

What was happening before Orcher.

  • Agents ran under three broad service accounts with read and write access to the entire case management system.
  • Statutory authority for an eligibility determination belongs to a named caseworker, and the agency's counsel would not accept an action it could not attribute.
  • An internal identity audit counted 144 non-human identities for every human one, most with no owner of record.

What Orcher enforced

The control surface, component by component.

  • Role Identity Fabric issued short-lived, role-scoped credentials derived from the directing caseworker, so agent entitlements are always a subset of the human's.
  • Directive Interface captured the caseworker's instruction in plain language and kept it as the permanent statement of what was asked.
  • Scope revocation follows HR: when a caseworker's role changes, every derived agent credential dies with it, in the same transaction.
  • The Immutable Audit Ledger records the caseworker, the role, the scope and the entitlement chain with each determination.

The data

Measured over the engagement window.

Identity controlBeforeAfter
Agent credential lifetimePermanent15 minutes, derived
Entitlement scopeSystem-wideSubset of directing caseworker
Owner of recordUnassigned (81% of identities)Named caseworker, always
Revocation on role changeManual ticket, 6–9 weeksAutomatic, 11 minutes
Attribution of a determinationService accountCaseworker and role

Identity posture before and after the Role Identity Fabric rollout.

Outcomes

What the organisation did next.

  • Counsel cleared agent-assisted eligibility research for production, having previously blocked it twice.
  • The agency retired all three broad service accounts.
  • Caseworkers reported the change as neutral to their workflow — the control is structural, not a new approval step.
  • The identity model was adopted as the agency's standard for all future automation, agentic or not.
“The statute names a person. Any system that cannot name that person back is not a system we can use, however good the answer is.”
— General Counsel, state benefits agency (partner declined attribution by name)

Read further

The research behind this engagement.

Disclosure. Design-partner engagement, anonymised at the partner's request. Figures are measured by Orcher's own observability and ledger instrumentation over the stated period and have not been independently audited. Market figures carry their own source line.

More engagements

Other organisations that had to prove the same thing.

Run this pattern on your own workflow

Design partners deploy Orcher on one directive class, instrument it the way this study was instrumented, and keep the evidence whatever they decide afterwards.

Apply for early accessAll case studies