An Insider’s Guide to a Cloud-Based Policy Management Process
Former Kentucky CIO Chuck Grindle shares key insights on how governments can move their policy management process into the cloud.
In the United States, public policy is the foundation on which business creation, growth, healthcare and economic development is built. The entire policy management process impacts citizens in almost all of their affairs—from occupational licenses to zoning requirements to travel restrictions. It is a critical part of how we live.Oftentimes, the end result—the actual published policy—is what gets talked about the most. But, there is a lengthy process that precedes this—a process which is long overdue for innovation and technological advancement.For former Commonwealth of Kentucky Chief Information Officer (CIO) and current Amazon Web Services (AWS) Executive Government Advisor Chuck Grindle, Ph.D., it’s a process he’s all too familiar with. [esper_resource_quote layout="1" count="1"]This sentiment isn’t just unique to Grindle’s experience, though. It’s a collectively-shared challenge across local, state and federal government agencies.Many agencies are still using legacy and on-prem infrastructure, printing out and circulating hard copies of policy and relying on manual processes for this crucial work. This way of policymaking has been working for decades, though. So, why change it?In recent years, there have been monumental improvements in government technology (govtech). Companies are creating scalable and adaptive tools, software and infrastructure specifically for government agencies.The goal of these technologies is to empower the government workforce with solutions to more effectively and efficiently conduct their work. There are several, easy-to-implement tech fixes to very common challenges in the government policymaking process.
“In the 21st Century, to require policymakers to be concerned about the formatting of content, instead of using a platform that can easily automate these tasks, is highly manpower-intensive and adds rudimentary time to an already very busy person.”
Understanding the stages of cloud adoption in the policy management process
There isn’t necessarily an “easy button” for cloud adoption. Oftentimes, it works in stages.Many agencies are typically already in various degrees of cloud adoption in their policy management process. In our experience, we’ve observed four common stages of cloud adoption in policymaking:
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.
