Digitizing Government Forms Through Collaboration: Montgomery County and U.S. Digital Response
Digitizing forms in government is not only about the forms but about moving an entire process online. Getting the form online can be among the simpler aspects of digitization, while challenges come with familiarizing residents with a new process and MCG employees with new ways of working. The benefits can be outstanding by saving residents time and energy, reducing stamp and paper usage, and creating sustainable processes with MCG teams. Recently Innovation@MCG met with Lauren Fishburn, who volunteers with U.S. Digital Response (USDR), to discuss the years-long collaborative initiative making the licensure and regulatory process more efficient for both county residents and employees.
PARTNERSHIP LEADS TO CLARITY
The digital response initiative Lauren helped launch, beginning in March 2020, involved the collaboration between the Department of Health and Human Services’ (DHHS) Licensure and Regulatory Services (LnR) department, Department of Technology & Enterprise Business Solutions, SeamlessDocs, Innovation@MCG, and volunteer organization USDR. Through this collaboration, they were able to map out a process, prototype forms, troubleshoot, and finally release digital versions of their forms. Now in 2022, any county resident who needs to obtain facilities or personal license or permit with DHHS can complete and submit required paperwork online via forms digitized using SeamlessDocs.
REDUCING THE BURDEN ON RESIDENTS AND GOVERNMENT
Residents expend so much time, money, and energy filling out paper forms, and processing paper forms can be just as cumbersome. Before this project started, LnR manually processed tens of thousands of paper copies of each of their 27 forms each year. About 75% of LnR paper forms contained incorrect or unusable data. Their form digitization process was “in the works” for seven years. Navigating the process, residents and business owners would have to jump through extra hoops like printing the forms or driving to multiple locations to pick up the forms. They would then mail the required paperwork back to LnR. Learning from past experiences, LnR decided to take the opportunity of revising their process to meet the residents where they are.
MAKING FORMS BETTER
Residents and business owners are already noticing the improvements to the process this collaboration produced. They are now able to fill out all forms virtually and send them in as one comprehensive packet. “The digitized [process] is better,” says Montgomery County resident, Ivins, who estimates he saved 45 minutes by completing the forms online. Along with time savings, residents and business owners will now be able to immediately receive confirmation of receipt of their paperwork. Restaurant owners, swimming pool operators, farmers market vendors, and many more will be able to navigate this interaction with their local government with much more ease.
By getting forms online using SeamlessDocs, the LnR team can now ensure residents are receiving the most up-to-date form possible. Using the time saved processing lots of paper forms, LnR can devote attention to ensuring all resident questions are answered and all forms are presented with correct information. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic transforming working styles, the previously paper-based team now has access to a better work-life balance by having the ability to complete their work at home.
USDR Volunteer Lauren Fishburn says, “75% of all forms filled out manually must be returned. Many patrons just gave up and came in person to the Licensure and Regulatory office to fill out these forms. This was one of those technical implementations that saves both citizens and government money. At USDR we love seeing this kind of impact!”
Key takeaways from this project include starting small and scaling, creating new patterns of work, and keeping the next steps clear. However, the major through-line in this work is collaboration, and what is possible when people internal and external to Montgomery County Government come together to make things better. The next phase in this process is studying how users of these newly digitized forms interact with the system and find out how LnR can do even more to better support each user.
