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Maryland Business Express Adds New Functionality

The  Maryland Department of Assessments and Taxation (SDAT) continues to introduce new functionality and enhancements to the award-winning  Maryland Business Express  platform. 

Headlining the latest round of updates is the addition of online filings of  Articles of Incorporation  for a  Religious Corporation . This filing involves highly customized screens for the Corporation's purpose, trustees, election of trustees, and place of worship, and the scope of information that customers can enter is limited to reduce the number of rejected filings. This filing also provides customers with an upfront checklist of required information and other valuable charter filing features such as PDF and acknowledgement letter creation, an alternate contact option, and decision recall capabilities for SDAT administrators. 

Key maintenance enhancements include:
  • Additional checkpoints for charter name availability. This reduces exposure for SDAT and customers who may start a filing and leave it in pending status for a period of time, only to return and find that the entity name has been created by another customer, submitted, and approved by SDAT. 
  • Processing of partial offline document orders. Instead of rejecting an entire multi-document order only because one document was illegible or unattainable, SDAT administrators can process a partial offline document order. This has reduced the number of offline document orders in SDAT's queue and improved the customer experience by not requiring them to reorder offline documents when one document isn't available.  
MBE has also again shown its ability to remain flexible and accommodate a dynamic legal environment. Due to the recent passage of Maryland Senate Bill 82, there are restrictions on adding Resident Agents to an entity's record. To address this legislation, MBE was programmed to prevent customers from entering additional Resident Agents. 

And most importantly, customer feedback for MBE continues to highlight the real value this platform provides. Recent unsolicited comments from those who used the application and completed a voluntary survey include these remarks ... 

"This was an amazingly painless process."

"This was easier than I thought and much better than having to fax in paperwork or mail paperwork. Thank you."

"I am not good with technology and this was easy for me to do and setup all by myself!"
NIC Maryland Enables Secure Online Donations for Department of Veterans Affairs

In this month when the nation honors the service and sacrifice that veterans and their families have made, NIC Maryland is proud to partner with the Maryland Department of Veterans Affairs to offer secure online donations for two important programs: Charlotte Hall Veterans Home and Service Animal Program and Fund. 

The  Charlotte Hall Veterans Home provides Maryland's veterans and eligible spouses with assisted living, skilled nursing, and memory care services in a safe, dignified, and nurturing environment. Donations to this program support  residents' dental and optometry costs, Final Honors arrangements, and activities in and outside the Home.  To learn more or make a donation, visit 
 

The Service Animal Program and Fund educates veterans and the community about Mar yland-based service and support dog programs and the benefits such dogs may provide to veterans living with a disability.  Donations to the fund are disbursed by the department to participating service animal programs to reimburse for costs associated with training and placing a service dog with a military veteran. To learn more or make a donation, visit 
NIC News: The Rise of Government as a Platform

By Robert Knapp, Chief Operating Officer, NIC Inc.

Most government agencies would agree that digital transformation is critical to successfully serving constituents. Those who are transforming are no longer just thinking about products and services as ways to meet operational goals, but they are evaluating them for their potential to better meet customer needs.

In the evolution of digital services, agencies have tended to build custom products. As software increasingly moves to the cloud, platforms are on the rise as a faster way to deliver new and more comprehensive functionality.

Platform is the new cloud
While custom development has its place for certain projects -- and probably always will -- platform development is the IT industry's hottest trend. In effect, it is the "new cloud," the next frontier that is capturing the same attention and scrutiny as cloud computing did a few years ago.

Platforms help agencies avoid creating monolithic systems whose upkeep requires staff with hard-to-find skillsets and whose solutions become isolated from each other over time. Instead, small, independent "building block" functions known as microservices, accessed by application programming interfaces (APIs) such as address verification or registration deadline lookup, can be developed once and deployed across multiple products. Done right, the process helps agencies gain speed, responsiveness and products that effectively interoperate.

The platform approach can complement custom development for government, as well. When an agency's entire IT team knows microservices have been created and are available on a platform, developers can use them to build custom products, rather than writing new code.

Why do platforms matter?
Platforms have powerful implications for government. Constituent expectations continually march forward, and platforms have the potential to shift government further toward that external, citizen-centric focus.

Platforms support what citizens believe should be possible from their city, county and state governments, offering seven key benefits:

1. Fast and flexible. With agile techniques, software features can be developed and delivered within a couple of months - or sometimes even a matter of weeks. Creating and using microservices that address specific problems and outcomes eliminates long planning cycles and reduces time to delivery.

2. Scalable.  Platforms ensure that there are no constraints in the number of constituents who can use a system at a given time. Say, for example, a taxation agency's shopping cart receives extraordinarily high use on April 15. With traditional custom development, the whole solution would have to be scaled to avoid a bottleneck during the brief period of high use. A platform approach, on the other hand, would allow the agency to scale up the shopping cart prior to Tax Day and back down after, without having to adjust other parts of the platform. 

3. Extendable. Platforms extend functionality and capabilities into new areas and across agencies. A microservice that performs a commonly needed function for one agency, for instance, is likely to work as well for other agencies, expanding the features governments can offer their constituents. 

4. Responsive to citizen expectations. Platforms drive convenience that aligns with the experience constituents expect. A unified search service, for example, could automatically connect government customers to the relevant agency for the business they want to conduct, rather than fording citizens to find that information on their own. 

5. Enables integration for PaaS components. Platform as a service provides cloud-based components developers can use to build services and applications online. A platform approach enables these ready-made, commercially available services to be easily integrated, saving time and money.

6. Centralizes data. A platform approach consolidates data and allows an agency to gain control over all of its information. Platforms also can pull data together to enable predictive analytics to solve problems in real time or provide insights before problems occur.

7. Supports the digital ecosystem. As government's digital ecosystem evolves, agencies will be able link to and communicate with each other using platform-supported APIs. One way citizens will benefit is by having a single profile that is recognized and trusted across intra-agency and intrastate platforms. 

Now is the time to explore platforms
Digital transformation has gone mainstream, but moving toward platform development still requires a mind shift. All government agencies should begin learning about and driving toward platforms. Those who are dedicating large percentages of budget and staff time to maintaining legacy systems may want to consider moving more quickly in that direction. The technology already exists for platforms that allow digital government services to be deployed quickly with a consistent citizen-centric experience.

Several states, for example, are participating in Gov2Go, a citizen-centric platform where all of a citizen's government interactions with all levels of government can be accessed through a mobile application presentation of the platform information. This is just one example of a digital ecosystem linking government agencies and delivering information and services in ways that truly put the citizen first.

Other states are getting behind centralized licensing and permitting solutions. A platform can bring together licensing or permitting services from multiple state agencies. Through a platform, microservices can be configured easily to develop a solution that best fits an individual agency's needs.

Bottom line: IT managers should think critically about their agency's highest value use cases for platforms, look hard at current investments and uncover more value by developing with microservices. Many states already are taking a platform approach. The case studies and proof of concept exist. Your agency could be next.


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NIC Maryland develops and supports digital government services without using taxpayer funds through a master contract with the State of Maryland. Maryland saves money with NIC's online applications that pay for themselves through a proven funding model. 
Janet Grard 
NIC General Manager

Andrea Greer
DoIT Contract Administrator
andrea.greer@maryland.gov