"UDig’s ability to work collaboratively while innovating modern tech solutions makes them an essential design partner that helps you maximize what’s possible."
State Government
Streamlined Business Processes and Improved User Experience for Legislation Management
Drafting and tracking bills through the state legislative process is multifaceted, requiring many steps of collaboration and review from government leaders, lawmakers, and drafters. Historically, this process has been cumbersome as it has relied on manual tasks and paper-driven reporting to meet each legislative element. Any software used to track the bills has typically become outdated, needing extensive upgrades. So, when a legislative technology company had a vision for helping a state government modernize its business processes and systems, they contacted UDig. As strategic partners, we worked together to design and build a flexible, collaborative tool that transforms how state governments manage the legislative process.
How We Went from Ideas to Impact
The Idea
Antiquated Legacy Software with Insufficient User Experience
The traditional workflows for supporting the legislative process are complex and have various independent elements that must work as a unit. However, at any point, the workflow can splinter and stifle efficiency due to its overlapping facets. Further, our client had an outdated legacy Windows desktop and server solution supporting the paper-based process, which limited their ability to modernize.
These challenges created an experience that dragged down the legislative process with:
- Different systems supported by different vendors: From budgeting and appropriations to drafting and templates and beyond, different systems must support the legislative process. In the legacy setup, our client had to use different vendors to meet these needs, which was costly and further complicated progress.
- Manual updates and reporting: Throughout the legislative process, relying on paper means that changes and updates must be manually managed. In addition, when creating reports to share with the public — such as the session journals — staff had to compile all daily sessions into a cohesive unit.
- No tracked systems: Relying on paper across the legislative process meant that a cohesive system for tracking progress was nearly impossible to create. Further, coordinating all working items required input from multiple people, yet, the paper-based process didn’t foster an ability to know who touched what during the legislative process.
The Process
Modernize Technology to Align With Legislative Bodies’ Needs and Automate Their Complex Processes
Streamlining and centralizing the various elements of the legislative process into a singular solution was fundamental to our design and build. However, since paper remains an important element of the process, we knew the framework still had to support this feature.
We needed one tool that could unify the shared legislative services and audit. From start to finish, the software’s architecture had to support every step involved, depicted in the image.
Key features needed to include:
- Collaborative Editing
Managing amendments to legislation is critical. We knew the tech solution must improve document management while easily accepting edits through an online tool.
- Ease of Third-Party Integration and Public Sharing
State governments have third-party tools that must seamlessly integrate into our tool. This feature required the solution to receive and send information through a shared data layer. Further, the solution had to efficiently support public reporting.
- Template Driven
As governments manage new bills during legislative sessions, they need the ability to draft content that replicates existing language. This feature was essential to streamlining the way sessions work.
- Adaptive and Flexible
Because state governments can have differing legislative processes, the solution must be adaptive and flexible enough to meet various needs.
- Automated Document Creation
The process requires ongoing verification from multiple parties. So, the tool had to support automatic document merging and creation, and eliminate the manual process of rekeying and re-entering changes.
Throughout our support, we collaborated with our build partner and led each project step with transparency. This thoughtful attention created a proactive, efficient relationship.
The Impact
A Web-Based Solution That Saves Time and Improves Efficiency
What once was a cumbersome process is now an innovative web-based tool. Actions that once took hours now only takes minutes. The modernized user interface streamlines business processes and provides digital avenues for formerly paper-driven processes. Everyone from journal clerks to enrolling and engrossing teams to legislative support groups like lawyers can collaborate in real-time. This singular ecosystem for all functionality allows users to enter and share documents, further limiting the potential for errors. Teams can also create bills more quickly and automate amending documents. And by containerizing all core services of the process, updates can easily happen and remain independent from the rest of the technology stack. Now, state governments have a modern, efficient solution that frees them to focus on serving their constituents and delivering on their promises.
- How We Did ItApplication DevelopmentProduct Design & DefinitionSolution Architecture
- Tech StackDockerGraphQLKeycloakMinioPostgresReact