It's time for the State of NH to get with the times

Last week, Gov. Kelly Ayotte announced a plan to modernize the Governor and Executive Council’s document process, aiming to save millions of taxpayer dollars and improve transparency in state government.

Currently, the Executive Council reviews all contracts over $10,000. Those contracts are printed and delivered to Executive Councilor's homes by the NH State Police. If you think that process is archaic and ridiculous, you’re not alone. Gov. Ayotte’s proposal would replace the current paper-based system with a digital platform for submitting and reviewing documents, eliminating the need to print and hand-deliver more than a million pages of paperwork each year.

“When I first took office, I promised we would make our government more efficient and effective,” Ayotte said in a statement. “By digitizing our Governor and Council process, we’ll save millions of dollars, ensure our State Troopers and all State employees can focus on serving Granite Staters, and increase public access and transparency in this important part of our government.”

According to the governor’s office, the state currently spends more than $200,000 annually on printed materials for the Governor and Council, totaling about 1.3 million pages a year. State Troopers spend roughly 240 hours annually hand-delivering those documents, which equates to about six work weeks, at a time when New Hampshire faces a shortage of 57 troopers.

Over the past decade, the state has spent about $3 million on printing and delivery costs for the process. Ayotte’s office said the switch to digital documents will make records more accessible to the public, reduce bureaucratic burdens on nonprofits and agencies, and allow state employees to dedicate more time to serving residents.

The fact that this process hasn’t been scrutinized before is mind boggling. Who even prints documents anymore? I haven’t had a printer in years. It’s not only a complete waste, it’s expensive. It’s also worth asking why NH State Police need to hand deliver these documents to the homes of Executive Councilors. Talk about a waste of resources. At the very least, free up the state police and create a new State of NH courier job to deliver the documents.

Digitizing the documents has a long list of benefits, including leveraging AI to summarize lengthy contracts and giving better visibility into verbiage that otherwise may have been missed. It’s time for the State of NH to get with the times and adopt technology that is readily available.

When the public learns about nonsense like this, it causes distrust in our government. It makes zero sense and this is by far, one of the most embarrassing state processes to be exposed in NH.

Chris Thompson’s (christhompsnh@gmail.com) column is published weekly on graniteeaglepress.com and howiecarrshow.com