The dome of the Montana Capitol, with the statue of Mike and Maureen Mansfield in the lower center (By Darrell Ehrlick of the Daily Montanan).
The Montana Legislature used to have the best legislative website in the country for tracking bills — that’s what Sen. Andrea Olsen was told roughly eight years ago.
This year, a new system launched, complete with new bugs.
The chief information officer for the Legislative Services Division said Wednesday a technology team is delivering code on a daily basis to fix the problems, and the goal is to have a top-notch system once again.
In the meantime, however, legislators, lobbyists and members of the public are running into roadblocks in trying to follow the work of the 69th Montana Legislature.
“Unfortunately, it truly is a disaster to start the session without efficient capacity to track bills,” Olsen said. “This is for us as legislators, but particularly for the public.”
Olsen, a lawyer, said the lack of transparency also runs contrary to protections in the Montana Constitution.
“We have a constitutional right to know, and a constitutional right to participate, and those two things are infringed when we have a system that is so difficult, and when there’s so many bugs to still work out,” Olsen said.
Jerry Howe, executive director of Legislative Services Division, and Dale Gow, chief information officer, said Wednesday the old system was a workhorse, but nonetheless, on its last legs.
Howe said he feared it wouldn’t make it through 2025, and the Legislative Services Division decided to create a new one in house. He said the goal is to have a website that works better than the old one, and the team is making progress.
“We understand that there is some frustration,” Howe said. “Be patient with us as we build this system from scratch. We think that people will be pleased with it as it unfolds and as it reaches its maturity.”
Problems, some solutions
Charles Denowh, with the Montana Group, has worked legislative sessions since 2003, and he said the old system was “very functional.” However, he said it was also dated, and the user interface was rudimentary.
“I understand why they decided it was time for an upgrade,” Denowh said.
He said Legislative Services couldn’t fully test the new system until the session started, and launching now means having to “fix it on the fly.”
“I feel bad for those guys,” Denowh said of the workers. “I know a lot of people are pretty angry at them. They’re fixing it as fast as they can, and I’ve been pretty impressed at how dedicated they’ve been to getting things right.”
He said he’s figured out some workarounds, but some features are still missing.
At least midday Wednesday, the third day of the session, he still hadn’t seen committee assignments listed on legislator pages. He’d also seen cancelled hearings still show up as taking place in a data export feature.
“That’s probably been the biggest difficulty I’ve seen is getting an accurate committee hearing schedule,” said Denowh, a lobbyist.
In the Senate, a political power struggle is taking place, and committee meetings have stalled. The stalling ended up demonstrating new shortfalls in the system too, Howe said.
“When they cancelled hearings in bulk, it created issues we had not foreseen or contemplated in the past,” Howe said.
On the other hand, he said it means developers can address it and create a more robust site.
“I’m not sure the old system would have accommodated the cancellations,” Howe said.
Time for an update
Howe said the redo didn’t come out of some desire to improve the system, it came out of necessity.
“We got through last session, but it took a lot of effort and work to hold that thing together,” he said.
A major upgrade was needed, and Gow said they decided to bring the project in house with a new suite of applications and the goal of “all the functionality that everybody has been using the past 30 years.”
They couldn’t dig into it right after the 2023 session because staff still have work to do afterwards, he said. They get funding to start their projects in July, but he said money wasn’t the issue, and time was.
“This was replacing 30-year-old technology within 10 months to get to baseline for the session,” Gow said.
A security application that was part of the project had some issues too, and that took nearly two months to sort out, Gow said. But he said the new applications are more secure.
“They used to be wide open,” he said.
In the past, he said, they relied on someone in Ireland to help fix system problems, and they decided to do the baseline work in their own shop in order to support the system themselves.
“Now we’re able to do all of these enhancements and bug fixes in house, and we’re able to turn those around very quickly,” Gow said.
At press time, a tally of the number of tickets for problems that needed to be fixed was not available, but Gow said eight developers and six analysts are working to address problems, in addition to their other duties.
A timeline for when the new system could be considered largely complete wasn’t set.
“It does take time to develop software in that way, and we’re confident that in time, this new system will be able to accomplish all the needs the public has with respect to bill status and transparency of the legislative process,” Howe said.
Moving forward
Matt Leow, with Tenacious Campaigns, said the old system was not just functional, it was familiar. The lobbyist said the new system is making Capitol veterans like him, around for 20 years, feeling like it’s the first day of school.
“What people are doing to try to address the problem is they’re buying the subscription services, which is great if you’re a well-paid lobbyist, not so great if you’re a member of the public who wants to stay informed and get involved in the process,” Leow said.
Years ago, Olsen said she attended the National Conference of State Legislators, and software sales people trying to sell bill tracking programs wouldn’t try to sell to her when they learned she was from Montana.
“They looked at me and said, ‘Oh, well you already have the best system in the country,’” Olsen said.
So she said she appreciates the goal with the new system is to emulate the old one, although the clock is ticking with the lack of transparency.
“It’s a disaster for public notice purposes,” Olsen said.
Sen. John Fuller, a Kalispell Republican, said he hasn’t heard complaints from constituents, but the slowdown in the Senate is part of the bigger picture too.
“Of course, part of the problem is we haven’t done anything yet,” Fuller said. “When we start cranking stuff out, if it’s not fixed by then — I think it will be — but if we start cranking stuff out, then people have the right to get upset.”
He said no one is to blame because the project involves a lot of changes, and he knows staff are working hard on the “hiccups.”
“We’re trying to increase accessibility while maintaining cybersecurity. Duh. Those are opposing ends,” Fuller said.