What COVID-19 taught us about policymaking
Esper works on the frontlines of government policymaking by providing software that seamlessly manages the internal policy process of regulatory agencies. Our customers span numerous industries, from health agencies like the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services to financial departments like the Georgia Insurance Commission. No matter the subject area, we’ve witnessed first hand the unique challenges and lessons that COVID-19 has presented to policymakers.
While the typical policymaking process is designed to be slow and deliberative, at the onset of COVID-19 regulatory agencies were faced with the task of quickly creating and implementing policies in response to the crisis at hand. The policy lifecycle became abbreviated, regulators needed quick access to data, and intergovernmental actions required a high degree of coordination.
We started Esper to help simplify the often complex and confusing policy landscape by providing an operating system to support the important work of government agencies. In the past year, we’ve seen a significant shift in agencies’ approaches to policymaking, where the old ways of crafting policy simply don’t work in a remote-friendly, and faster-paced world.
Here are our top takeaways:
Fast decisions require fast access to information
At the beginning of the pandemic, agencies were racing to enact a slew of policies aimed at introducing licensing reciprocity, allowing telemedicine, and helping newly unemployed individuals gain access to benefits (to name a few!).
These decisions needed to be made fast, as lives were literally hanging in the balance. In most cases, agencies weren’t interested in recreating the wheel. Rather, they were looking for examples of reliable, proven policy measures that other governments had already adopted. But finding these examples was labor-intensive and time-consuming if you don’t know where to look.
Many of our clients turned to a unique feature in Esper called “Similar Regulations,” where Esper automatically identifies similar policies across governments to help users easily compare and borrow policy language.
We use a proprietary algorithm that matches up policies based on several key indicators, helping regulators quickly find policy examples they could leverage in their own agency.
Take the state of Texas, for example. The health agency was looking to adopt telemedicine regulations that allow doctors to see patients online. The goal was to make healthcare accessible to rural areas and protect doctors (and patients) from potential COVID-19 exposure in-clinic.
A quick search for “telehealth” in Esper will pull up policies across the United States. From there you can drill down to the states and use their policies as a template for revisions in Texas.
This saves regulators time, and most importantly, helps citizens (the end-user) get faster and safer access to healthcare.
Governments are embracing a remote-flexible environment
When working in-person became an intolerable risk, many governments shifted to a remote or remote-flexible environment. The transition wasn’t always smooth, as governments have been slower to adopt cloud-based software and many lacked an IT infrastructure designed to support remote-work.
This is especially true for policymaking, where there’s a high degree of collaboration across stakeholders in the creation and implementation of regulations. When you have a distributed team, it’s essential that there’s a single source of truth for all collaborators in an organization. Software is no longer a “nice to have,” but an essential tool for helping team members stay on top of goals.
The typical rulemaking project has at least 7 stakeholders involved (lawyers, subject matter experts, enforcement, etc). Esper’s Policy Builder helps various stakeholders stay on top of active rulemaking projects. Collaborators can easily track deadlines, concurrently edit working documents, and submit policies through different levels of review.
Simply put, a productive and aligned remote team demands cloud-based software that’s intuitive and supports their daily work.
Government interoperability and coordination became necessary
COVID-19 has stress-tested how different levels of government work together to achieve goals. Federal, state, and municipal governments are each in charge of creating and enforcing policies that need to be coordinated to protect citizens.
However, cracks began to show as it became clear that policy frameworks across the United States were not aligned. Government agencies didn’t have the resources to track policy initiatives, and ended up creating their own that in many cases unintentionally conflicted with each other. Even within a single state government, agencies would often duplicate efforts to solve the same problem.
Interoperability is now a clear goal for government agencies. Regulators need a clear policy map that shows what other governments are doing and more importantly, how it relates to their work.
Esper’s Discovery tool helps regulators track proposed federal and state regulations, and relates them back to how their policies are impacted. This much-needed tool helps agencies quickly identify where there might be gaps in coverage or where there is unwanted duplication or contradiction.
Moving forward, agencies must be more proactive, rather than reactive, when it comes to analyzing the policy landscape and developing a policy agenda in coordination with other governments. This is ultimately most important for creating a seamless citizen experience, where people can navigate unemployment benefits, understand COVID-19 vaccination plans, and get access to the information they need with clarity and ease.
