This is a periodic newsletter of the interesting things we’ve seen and what we are thinking about in open source policy analysis.

Was the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) “pro-family”? In the most recent #TCJAWhatNow blog series post, Alex Brill explores how the TCJA affects different family structures. Brill uses Tax-Calculator* to estimate the average tax cut enjoyed by families of varying sizes and incomes. Link

Policy Simulation Library (PSL) debuts its new discussion forum. Join the conversation on PSL’s* new Discourse channel for Q&A, announcements, and general discussion. Link

What can machine learning tell us about the Hong Kong protests? PCI-Crackdown is a new open source project that uses machine learning to predict if and when the Chinese government will ramp up their counterprotest against protesters in Hong Kong. Using similar methodology as PCI-China,* PCI-Crackdown uses machine learning to “read” articles from the People’s Daily, and compares their rhetoric to articles published leading up to the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre. Link

Expanding financial services in third-world countries. Mojaloop, an open source project supported by the Gates Foundation, helps customers send digital payments to other people or companies, regardless of what bank or financial service they use. Mojaloop is designed to be used by central banks and financial institutions to create interoperable payment platforms that can scale in serving the poor. Link

The September PSL newsletter is out. Check out user highlights and model updates from OSPC-incubated projects such as ParamTools, Tax-Cruncher, Tax-Calculator, and Tax-Brain. Link

* These projects are attendees or graduates of OSPC’s incubator program.

Edited by Matt Jensen and Peter Metz