The New Jersey Department of Transportation (DOT) is the latest example of a government body automating processes as decisively as the California Secretary of State, for instance, has done. What can be learned from the similarity between both states?
(To come to your own conclusions, click here to read the New Jersey DOT case study. Click here to watch the video about the California Secretary of State.)
Comparing California and New Jersey Use Cases
Let’s compare the trademark submission process in California with the employment application process in New Jersey. Instead of California entrepreneurs having to submit paperwork in person or by mail for trademark or service mark registration – which people previously had to do – Californians can now submit their trademark application online through the business file California portal.
Similarly, in New Jersey, residents used to have to print off an application for employment and bring it to the DOT office for processing; plus, none of the applicants could know where exactly their application were in the process, as applications could be sitting in a government employee’s inbox on his desk, untouched. However, thanks to the shift to process automation and online forms, people in New Jersey can now apply for a job, such as to work as a snowplow driver, all online.
The shift has improved the experience that people have with government. In a video featuring the California Secretary of State, the point is made that online forms are “making it easier to do business” within the state. Instead of standing in line, the goal is now for people to go online. The same is true for New Jersey.
As noted in publicly available information, California has also gained the ability to allow state government staff to process applications more quickly, just as the same has unfolded at the New Jersey Department of Transportation.
“We were able to achieve our goal of going paperless and constructing a workflow process-oriented environment in which we could replace tedious manual work with automation to free up people to do higher-value activities,” said Marc Dorsch, Applications Development and Systems Support, New Jersey Department of Transportation. “By adopting the SimpliGov platform, we gained the ability to look at, ‘Hey, this is how the person interacts with information and what they do with it.’ Because of it, better processes are created, along with the streamlining of forms that we present to the public, which benefit from the automation.”
Another similarity between California and New Jersey is that they did not only randomly adopt online forms. They used the transition to online forms to relook at processes and see where improvements could be made as well as workflows simplified.
Dorsch added, “We knew early on that it would take a while for everything to go paperless. But we also knew that we had to start somewhere and learn from the deployment government workflow automation. It includes online forms, but it’s much more than just online forms. We opened our minds to tackling processes and workflows as a way to add significantly more value to the state.”
In addition, California and New Jersey were similar in adopting a “no code” solution, which is part of the new wave of innovative solutions redefining process automation and online forms with integrated electronic signatures. It enables a government to avoid complex and costly IT development.
“Even though you don’t code, code, code as an in-house team, the SimpliGov platform opened up new possibilities for the department’s in-house application development team and eased us away from nitty gritty coding to macro-coding across many systems and applications. The ability to handle all the data from every SaaS solution, not just SimpliGov, is a significant undertaking,“ said Dorsch, who added that what can now be done in the cloud in New Jersey is “revolutionary.”
To read the full New Jersey DOT case study, go to: https://simpligov.com/new-jersey-department-of-transportations-secret-success-online-forms/
To view the video with the California Secretary of State, go to: https://simpligov.com/simpligov-accelerates-processes-for-the-california-secretary-of-state/
For more information about SimpliGov, go to simpligov.com or contact Troy Bare, VP of Sales, at tbare@simpligov.com
