CalFIRE streamlines mission-critical policy issuance with Esper

We’re pleased to announce the launch of Esper’s partnership with the California Department of Forestry & Fire (CalFIRE). 

CalFIRE is responsible for safeguarding California through fire prevention and protection, emergency response, and stewardship of natural resources systems. This is a mission-critical agency in California, a state whose wildfires have reached unprecedented heights in the past decade. 

CalFIRE is at the front lines of protecting Californians, and as a result, is constantly updating and changing its policies and procedures. When we first connected with CalFIRE, they highlighted three core challenges with its current policy management system: 

Collaboration & version control

Their existing method of obtaining approvals through Docusign didn’t allow different stakeholders to make edits once they received a document. Further, there was no centralized platform for stakeholders to view the document throughout the process, leading to many months delays in the issuance process.

Esper’s workflow tool is configured specifically for individual agency needs. After mapping out the different policy workflows, they are configured within Esper along with unique roles and permissions. Stakeholders are notified when it’s their turn to review the document, make changes, and request feedback on policy tasks. 

Tracking expiring policies

With over 3,000 handbook documents, each with different revision dates, it was extremely challenging to ensure they remain in compliance with revision policies that require handbooks to be reviewed at least every 12 months.

Esper automatically tracks key dates associated with documents and flags policies that are expiring or due for review. Many state governments have mandated review cycles, and we built this date tracker to help agencies streamline and organize their review process.

Real-time access to policies in the field

Staff on incidents are constantly on the move and with their existing system, they do not have real time information available on their phones. This inability to access policies while in the field posed significant legal and compliance risk for the agency.

Esper’s Policy Library is mobile-friendly and easy to search. With the Policy Library, field staff are able to quickly find policies by keyword, citation, and advanced search terms. Esper helps track attestation on policies and reports out key metrics on the Policy Library, such as time spent reading a policy or number of views. 

The policymaking challenges CalFIRE needed to solve are consistent with what we hear from other state agencies. We built Esper with the intention of streamlining the policy management process so governments can focus on what really matters: serving our citizens.  

With Esper’s partnership, CalFIRE stakeholders will be able to seamlessly collaborate throughout the drafting process, continually be alerted regarding revision dates, and easily publish their policy to ensure employees have real-time information.