Written by Colin Wood
Montana state government agencies are currently engaged in an internal competition to go digital.
Late last year, Gov. quietly challenged. Greg Gianforte urges executive-branch agencies to digitize 100% of their business processes. It’s not exactly a challenge, as the only rewards for winning are bragging rights – and the agencies seem to be cooperating with each other – but according to the state’s chief information officer, the stakes are still high.
“The effort involved by both citizens and agents should really be impacted by the ability to do this,” said Kevin Gilbertson, who was appointed by Gianforte in March.
Gilbertson said that simply converting paper-based processes to PDF files and placing them on a website does not count as a digital service. Instead, he is pushing agencies to reconsider their business processes as they use digital forms and apps that create new efficiencies and make it easier to deal with the state. Ever since becoming CIO, building “customer success” has been a top priority, whether the customer is a state agency or a state resident.
To achieve the goal of 100% digital services statewide, Gilbertson said his office provides low-code and no-code software, from vendor ServiceNow, to agencies so that they themselves can develop and manage new processes.
“This is a very good opportunity, as a federated organization, to come together and show a spirit of collaboration.”
Kevin Gilbertson, Montana Chief Information Officer
Gilbertson said the state Department of Commerce is likely to be the first to cross the finish line this June, and said other agencies could be fully digitized at some point in 2023. But he said he doesn’t want to -commit on that date because he was still inventorying the state’s technology assets. From counting fax machines to finding PDFs hidden in old web pages, he said determining the scope of the project was surprisingly difficult.
“There’s still a lot to be done to determine the sum of it all,” Gilbertson said.
Another big challenge is training, he said. That’s partly why the state chose a low-code, no code platform, that requires less technical capability and won’t burden the state’s IT administrators with an ever-expanding pool of applications to manage while more departments are going digital. State services should be managed by the businesses that provide them, Gilbertson said.
Montana’s push for digitization is subject to broader initiatives to improve customer service and increase the use of state data. Working “on lockstep” with the state’s Chief Data Officer Adam Carpenter, Gilbertson said the state is developing a “shared data lake,” hashing data-sharing agreements and working through a new management board to improve the use of state data.
Chief customer success officer Rian Miller, meanwhile, works with agencies ’customer success managers to ensure agencies and residents get a great experience. And Gilbertson, like many state CIOs, wants to build a unified digital portal for residents seeking services or information.
“This is a great opportunity, as a federated organization, to come together and show a spirit of collaboration within the organization,” he said.