An innovative effort that led to the creation and enhancement of a
Montana Department of Revenue (DOR) website has earned a prestigious
2019 Service to the Citizen: Champions of Change Award that honors
public servants of all levels for their leadership and dedication to
delivering an outstanding experience to the public.
The DOR service, My Revenue (app.mt.gov/myrevenue),
and its project team competed against federal, state, and international
efforts that produced citizen services with outstanding customer
experience in the past year. The award also recognizes the use of
emerging technologies, and modernization of information technology
infrastructure to deliver services.
“No one’s excited to pay their taxes, but the My Revenue platform has
made it simpler and easier for Montanans,” said Gene Walborn, director
of the Montana Department of Revenue. “I’m proud of the work our team
accomplished to make things better for our citizens while also saving
taxpayers’ money.”
My Revenue is an online platform that delivers hundreds of forms to
citizens with an easy-to-navigate interface. The project team’s vision
to provide multiple routes for citizens to access information ensures
users of all technical abilities can connect with state government
effortlessly. And, the strategic concept extends beyond the front end.
With this new service, the DOR can self-serve, creating its own forms
and content, saving tens of thousands of dollars annually in development
costs.
In the first quarter of 2019, citizens and businesses submitted more
than $115,000 in payments through the service. Of the nearly 75,000
users accessing the service during this time frame, 19.5% used a mobile
phone or tablet – a testament to the service’s mobile responsiveness and
user-friendly design.
A home for all revenue-related forms, the application is redefining how
Montana’s government serves its citizens. Instead of searching through a
clunky website with little-to-no direction, My Revenue uses innovative
natural language, keyword and guided searches, and an extensive form
dictionary that can be filtered based on tags. Now citizens have no
problem identifying the correct form in a catalog of more than 300
documents. A single sign-on component allows citizens to save progress,
exit, return to drafts, and view past submissions.
Through the administrative module, DOR staff can convert paper
applications to web forms at their own convenience, eliminating the need
to contact outside vendors to build forms. Updates to existing forms can
be published same day rather than requiring a multi-week deployment. DOR
staff can configure web forms to integrate with Perceptive, the State’s
preferred enterprise content management system.
Whether appealing a property tax appraisal, paying medical marijuana
provider taxes, or requesting an examination of a DOR tax decision,
Montana’s citizens and businesses expect government customer services to
be efficient and intuitive, just like services from leading
private-sector organizations. With its modern, streamlined, responsive
customer experience, My Revenue fits the bill.
The winning project team includes the DOR’s Carol Schopfer, Bill
Jarocki, Tarek Haffar, Patrick Miller, Matt Brotherton, and Wendy Brown,
and three staff members from the DOR’s partner, Montana Interactive:
Megan Gretch, Spencer Jones, and Josh Morasko.
Service to the Citizen winners will be recognized on May 2 in
Washington, D.C. For more information about the event, visit www.servicetothecitizenawards.org.
About Montana.Gov (Montana Interactive)
Helena-based Montana
Interactive builds, operates, and maintains the State of Montana’s
eGovernment services that are available through the official website, www.mt.gov.
Montana Interactive is a wholly owned subsidiary of eGovernment firm NIC.
About NIC
NIC Inc. (Nasdaq: EGOV) launched the digital government industry in
1992, and continues to lead it, providing a secure payment engine and
thousands of digital government solutions across a network of more than
6,000 federal, state, and local government agencies. In addition, NIC is
the nation’s leading provider of outdoor recreation solutions, with 1
out of 6 hunting and fishing licenses in the United States sold using an
NIC service. The Company launched the nation’s first personal assistant
for government and comprehensive mobile platform, Gov2Go®, as
well as the innovative, data-driven prescription drug monitoring
platform, RxGov®. More information is available at www.egov.com.
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