Achieving the agency’s goals of equity, innovation and engagement in policymaking

The Washington State Department of Health (DOH) has a clear mission—to protect and improve the health of all people in Washington. COVID-19 highlighted just how critical transparency and regulatory compliance is for healthcare agencies and their citizens.

Washington State DOH was limited in functionality by their existing homegrown system for managing rulemakings. These limitations would prevent the agency from being as adaptive as they needed to be. In addition, this system did not provide them with the ability to engage with their citizens on policies that would directly impact them.

Esper and the Washington State DOH partnered in December of 2021 with the joint goal of modernizing and streamlining this critical regulatory work. Esper is able to bring all necessary policies into a single, cloud-based platform and structure all of this data to identify policies in need of review.

Washington State DOH staff will be able to easily search all of their regulations, laws and policy documents—and collaboratively draft amendments and repeals from the same platform.

Another critical requirement was the ability to increase the agency’s engagement with citizens. With Esper, Washington State DOH can incorporate public comments into their ongoing rulemakings. This partnership allows the agency to execute on their vision and build for the future.