Written by Benjamin Freed
The Montana Department of Commerce won an informal race among state-government agencies to achieve 100% digitization, the Gov.’s office announced. Greg Gianforte earlier this month.
The department, which is responsible for promoting economic development, housing and tourism, is expected to be the first to achieve the all-digital benchmark, which Gianforte encouraged state agencies to reach by the end of the 2023 fiscal year. .
According to a press release, the Commerce Department now runs transactions and other processes on software from ServiceNow, the digital workflow vendor. The agency’s new platform was developed in conjunction with the State Department of Administration, which includes Montana’s IT division.
“Commerce has developed new processes that will add significant improvements to our workflow and make us more efficient, internally and externally, to best serve the public and our stakeholders,” said Montana Commerce Department Director Scott Osterman in the press release.
State Chief Information Officer Kevin Gilbertson told StateScoop in March that the Montana Department of Commerce is the furthest from reaching the digitization finish line. At the time, Gilbertson said simply scanning and uploading paper-based processes to websites didn’t count as a digital service, and agencies were expected to create digital forms and mobile ones. application to make their services easier for residents to access.
He also said that much of the application development used ServiceNow’s low-code and no-code tools, reducing the burden for specialized technical skills and speeding up development timelines.