Method to ensure maintenance of individual government benefits in a retail environment

1. A method to ensure maintenance of individual government benefits in a retail environment, the method comprising:

identifying an individual shopper with an associated level of available benefits during a shopping session;

tracking purchases relative to predetermined criteria, including the associated level of available benefits; and

scheduling a next appointment during the shopping session for the individual shopper with an agency providing the government benefits based on the tracking, wherein a potential lapse in benefits is avoided.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein identifying further comprises identifying through a smart card.

3. The method of claim 2 wherein tracking further comprises determining a history of a rate of purchase for the identified shopper, an amount of the available benefits left, and a lead time required to make an appointment with a particular agency as the predetermined criteria.

4. The method of claim 3 wherein scheduling further comprises scheduling via a personal shopper device in use by the shopper.

5. The method of claim 4 wherein scheduling further comprises providing available time slots for the next appointment when an immediate need for scheduling the next appointment exists based on the tracking during the shopping session.

6. The method of claim 5 further comprising providing a reminder of a selected time slot for the next appointment.

7. The method of claim 5 further comprising providing a notice of an expected date when the next appointment may be needed if an immediate need does not exist based on the tracking during the shopping session.

8. The method of claim 4 further comprising utilizing SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) components of publish, find, and bind during the performance of the identifying, tracking, and scheduling.

9. The method of claim 8 wherein utilizing the SOA component of publish further comprises publishing services by the particular agency, the services including a service to query for the lead time for the particular agency, a service to return a list of open time slots for appointments, and a service to book an appointment.

10. The method of claim 9 wherein utilizing the SOA components of find and bind further comprises finding with the personal shopper device a published service for scheduling, and binding to the published service to make calls to APIs in the published service.

11. A method for ensuring maintenance of individual government benefits in a retail environment, the method comprising:

notifying an individual shopper during a shopping session of a need to make an appointment for obtaining further government benefits; and

scheduling the appointment during the shopping session with an agency providing the government benefits.

12. The method of claim 11 further comprising utilizing a business rules determination for the notifying based on a rate of purchase in a history for the individual shopper, an amount of benefits remaining for the individual shopper, and an amount of lead time to make an appointment with the agency.

13. The method of claim 11 further comprising utilizing SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) components of publish, find, and bind during the performance of the notifying and scheduling.

14. The method of claim 11 wherein the government benefits further comprise benefits for a WIC-EBT (Women, Infant, and Children—Electronic Balance Transfer) program provided by a WIC agency.

15. The method of claim 11 wherein scheduling further comprises providing available time slots for the appointment by considering agency availability along with personal criteria input by the individual shopper regarding appointment time preferences.