Meet the newest addition to the GovTech 100: Esper

Each year, Government Technology compiles and publishes their GovTech 100 list. These 100 companies are focused on partnering with state and local governments across the U.S. to help improve service delivery and operations.

The GovTech 100 included 18 new companies for 2022—including Esper. We are witnessing a monumental shift in how governments tackle internal processes and manual workflows, along with how they serve their constituencies. Software as a Service (SaaS) and cloud-native tools have overflowed from the private sector into the public sector. Dustin Haisler, Government Technology’s Chief Information Officer, has described this as gov tech’s “app store moment.”

As evidenced by the GovTech 100 list, it’s no surprise that SaaS platforms are in such high demand. Many governments are acutely aware of the challenges that legacy (such a dirty word now), custom-coded software has brought them. We all know that data has been silo’d, processes splintered into multiple pieces of software and how unresponsive these systems have been to the ever-shifting needs of today. That’s where SaaS starts to separate itself from the pack.

The nature of SaaS allows agencies to adapt. This means if a feature or function isn’t working as it should, it can be changed in an update. If offices shut down for an unforeseen reason, new workflows can be automated and digitized to allow essential government business to continue.

SaaS also brings consistency and transparency. Leveraging these types of platforms will deliver the same experience day-in and day-out for government offices, while allowing collaboration across all key stakeholders.

Esper’s regulatory and policy management software does just this. We envision a regulatory process that works in harmony with markets and data to drive transparent and accountable decision-making. Our job as visionaries is to build an infrastructure that ties together data from the private and public sectors to enable proactive public administration.

Since our inception in 2018, we have partnered with a number of state and local agencies to help policymakers create and manage policy from a single source of truth.

In the State of Tennessee, Esper was chosen by Tennessee Governor Bill Lee to support five state-wide agencies, with plans to expand to more in the future. We provide our data analysis, workflow and retrospective review tools for these agencies and have dramatically improved their regulatory processes.

In the State of Texas, the Texas Department of Agriculture lost critical institutional knowledge around their regulatory process due to staff changes within the agency. They partnered with Esper to build a new, updated rulemaking system to ensure that internal knowledge of processes stays within the agency. Now the Texas Department of Agriculture can retain detailed, structured and searchable rulemaking records.