The backstory
Every year the Maryland Department of Transportation (MDOT) processes thousands of forms for each of their transportation business units (TBUs). Until 2018, MDOT had been using paper forms for many internal and citizen-facing processes. Keeping track of paper forms requires a tremendous amount of time, money, and effort, so when MDOT was looking for a more efficient solution for their form management process, they came to us.
Areas for
improvement
While employing a paper process, the department had to grapple with the ever present possibility of human error that comes with a hand-to-hand workflow and a manual data-entry process. With their old system, forms had the potential to be misplaced, given to the wrong approver, or lost entirely.
A game-changer
Our solution was to create a digital eforms portal to upgrade MDOT from their current paper process. This new technology converted MDOT's old processes, including form building, submissions, workflow, approvals, and storage. The system has increased accountability within the organization and has streamlined processes.
A new set
of features
Searchability
The eForms portal makes searching for and finding forms easy. Users can search for forms by typing in the name, number, or an associated keyword into the system search bar, they can browse through form groups based on a tagging system, or they can filter by category.
Customizable workflows
Long gone are the days of a complicated hand-to-hand form management process - shuffling papers between approvers. With digital workflow users can easily map out their process and make sure that forms end up in the right hands every time.
Form submission and approval functionalities
Besides building and managing forms, the eForms portal also has submission and approval capabilities that allow users to easily review and approve or reject forms within the same system.
Real-time status updates
The MDOT eForms portal keeps users updated in real time about the status of forms and submissions, increasing transparency and accountability throughout the entire process.
Reporting
Users have access to up-to-date reports on forms and submissions where they can view metrics for completed and in-progress submissions as well as average duration for each process step. These metrics allow users to locate key bottlenecks and improve process accountability.
Impact
After six months of collaboration and iteration, we launched the MDOT eForms portal in seven organizations supporting 10,000 users. One of the first forms MDOT employees tested in the system had an average processing time of 14 days, including design, development, and approval. After the implementation of the MDOT eForms portal? Seven days - a fifty percent reduction in processing time. The efficiency of MDOT's new system continues to improve as employees test more forms and become familiar with the system.