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.
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.
- Department of Human Services: We deployed tools to conduct a retrospective review of rules, identifying many with repealed references, unnecessary restrictions, out-of-date language and other abnormalities
- Department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse Services: We helped them seamlessly transfer to remote work at the onset of the pandemic, with no delay in the rulemaking process
- Department of Environment and Conservation, Department of Health and Department of Commerce and Insurance: We mapped their business processes within Esper to automate their rulemaking 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.
Frequently Asked Questions
Esper’s Regulation & Code Management module is a platform that moves rulemaking and regulatory drafting out of disconnected tools (spreadsheets, emails, shared drives) and into a unified, auditable workflow. It supports collaborative drafting, version control, automated publishing, compliance deadlines, and AI-powered search across your regulations. Esper
Esper is primarily targeted at government agencies (state, local, regulatory bodies) that must manage, publish, and enforce rules, codes, or regulations. It helps modernize the regulatory process in a transparent, auditable fashion.
Some of the core features include:
- Collaborative drafting with versioning and redlines
- Workflow and approval routing (assign owners, set deadlines, send reminders)
- Automated publishing in appropriate formats
- AI-enabled search to quickly find portions of regulations with citation support
- Task management and visibility into bottlenecks
Esper maintains all drafts, redlines, and versions within a single system. That ensures every change is tracked, auditable, and tied to the appropriate approval steps, so stakeholders can always see “who changed what when.”
Every rulemaking task (e.g. drafting, review, public comment, approval) is assigned an owner and due date. The system sends reminders, tracks overdue items, and makes bottlenecks visible so leadership can intervene.
