Here’s what doesn’t work when introducing new technology in government: mandates from leadership, massive budgets you don’t have and trying to get everything perfect before anyone can use it.
Here’s what does work: starting small with the people doing the actual work, building community through shared wins and letting transparency drive accountability.
Washington County, Oregon figured this out the hard way. Their IT Project Management Office needed to modernize workflows across 35 decentralized divisions operating in silos with spreadsheets and manual processes. Sound familiar? The county faced the same challenges every state and local government deals with: shrinking budgets, overworked staff and departments that don’t talk to each other.
They didn’t wait for perfect conditions. They didn’t build a five-year strategic plan. And they definitely didn’t mandate anything. They identified one department with a real pain point, gave them a tool that could solve it, then let that success speak for itself.
In a recent webinar hosted by Sean McSpaden, Senior Fellow at the Center for Digital Government, Theme Granz, Division Manager for Washington County’s IT PMO, walked through exactly how this grassroots approach transformed their IT and PMO functions. Jennifer Parker, Sales Director SLED at monday.com, also added her insights.
Start small with a real problem
Washington County didn’t begin by pitching executives or building business cases. As Theme explained, “it actually started with our Office of Access and Opportunity… it started out in one department and then it expanded across the county.”
The initiative grew organically rather than through careful planning. “We didn’t really define it as a modernization initiative, it really started a bit more organic.” Theme said.
That single department became the proof of concept. Once they solved one real problem and showed measurable impact, other departments wanted in. Sean McSpaden noted that Washington County’s success “didn’t come from a mandate from the leaders within the organization. It came from empowering end users and guiding change with intention.”
This matters because government employees have seen too many top-down technology initiatives fail. They’ve been through the expensive system implementations that never quite work. They’ve attended the mandatory training sessions for tools nobody uses. They’re skeptical for good reason.
Jennifer Parker affirmed this bottom-up approach: “There’s nothing wrong with starting small, starting project oriented and getting buy-in from the bottom up.”
The momentum can start anywhere in an organization.
For other government organizations, this means identifying where manual work creates the most friction. Permit processing across multiple departments. Procurement workflows that involve stakeholders who rarely collaborate. Grant management that requires constant status updates. Capital project coordination between planning, engineering and community development.
Pick one. Solve it completely. Let that team become your internal advocate.
Build community, not compliance
Washington County’s IT team didn’t mandate adoption. They couldn’t. “We don’t have a stick. We cannot say you must use [monday]. That’s a challenge and also an asset,” Theme noted.
Instead of forcing change through policy, they built community through champions. Theme explained the philosophy:
The team actively sought out people on the ground who understood the pain points. “We really did a good job of identifying what are those core groups on the ground that are actually dealing with that spreadsheet,” Theme said. The goal was to “look for efficiencies and tool sets that bring people together.”
Finding those champions and promoting their stories became the catalyst for organic growth. Find who those people are and promote them. Sell their stories and share their stories.
The approach centered on building trust and ownership. Theme focused on “ensuring they felt an ownership in this process, that something wasn’t being done to them, but instead they were leading.”
This means identifying people in your organization who naturally gravitate toward solving problems with better tools. These aren’t necessarily your most tech-savvy people. They’re the ones frustrated enough with current processes to try something different, and enthusiastic enough to share what works.
Give them a platform to showcase their solutions. Create opportunities for them to teach their colleagues. Let their results build credibility that no mandate ever could.
Make work visible and watch accountability follow
Most project management happens in people’s heads, in email threads that only some people see, and in status update meetings where everyone scrambles to remember what they did last week. This creates two problems: leaders can’t see what’s actually happening until something breaks, and teams waste enormous time on manual status reporting.
Washington County’s shift to monday.com flipped that dynamic completely. Jennifer Parker identified what previous systems lacked: “Lack of visibility into the crucial projects, lack of accountability,” which led to workers “spending so much time hunting down information to try to put it together to get a report.”
Real-time dashboards changed everything. Jennifer shared a success story: “They’ve shared with me the emails that they’ve received from the other agencies who are their customers saying we can cancel these meetings twice a month because now we have real time visibility and reports, we don’t need meetings.”
The platform was built around this principle. “Monday is designed to give business leaders complete visibility and control over the execution. It is designed with visibility.” Jennifer explained.
In government contexts, this visibility transforms collaboration across departments, tracking of multi-year initiatives, and understanding of where bottlenecks exist in shared processes. When everyone can see the status of a zoning review, planners aren’t sending email after email asking “Where are we with this?” When capital project deliverables are tracked visually, project managers know exactly what’s due and who’s responsible.
Visibility creates accountability without micromanagement. Leaders get the information they need without endless status meetings. Staff don’t waste time compiling reports. The system shows the work and flags problems early.
Let departments build what they need (within guardrails)
One of the biggest shifts in Washington County’s approach was redefining IT’s role. Instead of being gatekeepers who controlled every workflow and customization, they became enablers who provided platforms and governance.
Jennifer Parker described the strategic shift: “We’re seeing our smartest agencies giving the departments and their employees tools like Monday.com so that they can digitize their own workflows. Teams can build their own solutions independently, and this is important while IT can still retain that visibility and governance.”
The benefits are clear. “This relieves the pressure on IT but it accelerates transformation by giving the people closest to the work the ability and the tools to create their own workflows.”
Theme confirmed that IT steps back from defining specific processes: “We’re allowing departments and organizations to figure that out on their own. We’re giving them the platform and that’s typical of IT because we’re not in the business, specifically.”
The PMO positioned itself as a partner rather than a controller. “We are a partner, and we’re not here to tell them what to do, but to show them value and how that impacts what they do day to day.” Theme explained.
For other government organizations, this model means IT provides the platform, sets security and data standards, and maintains oversight. But departments get the autonomy to build workflows that actually match how they work. Public works managing infrastructure projects can adapt templates differently than community services coordinating social programs. Both get the structure they need for reporting while retaining the flexibility they need to be effective.
That balance between autonomy and oversight accelerates modernization without adding bureaucracy. It empowers people closest to the work to solve their own problems while ensuring organizational coherence.
Remember: Technology enables, people transform
Here’s what Washington County understood that many technology initiatives miss: modernization isn’t fundamentally about software. It’s about people.
Sean McSpaden stated early in the webinar:
Theme also emphasized where momentum actually comes from: “The energy really starts from the ground up, and to touch a chord with those staff members who really get why we want to integrate and utilize tools that collaborate.”
Jennifer Parker sees this pattern consistently across successful implementations: “People love it. Like the workers love to use it… when you have a tool like that that’s helping people feel empowered to do their jobs better, and they love to use it.”
When employees feel ownership and see immediate impact, change sticks. When they’re forced to adopt tools that add overhead without solving real problems, they revert to old habits the moment no one’s watching.
What this means for your organization
Washington County faced the same constraints every state and local government deals with: limited budgets, decentralized operations, siloed departments, skeptical staff who’ve seen initiatives fail before, and no mandate powerful enough to force real adoption.
They succeeded by solving real problems for real people, building community around shared wins, making work visible so accountability happens naturally, empowering departments to build what they need, and keeping the human element at the center.
The technology matters, but the approach matters more. Washington County succeeded with a people-first strategy that respected expertise, demonstrated value and let momentum build organically.
Your staff don’t need mandates. They need tools that makes their actual work easier, a process that respects their expertise, autonomy to solve their own problems, and a community where they can share what works.
Start with one team that has a real pain point. Solve it completely. Make those results visible. Build community around the champions who emerge. Let that momentum spread naturally. That’s how you modernize without mandates.
Ready to see how other government organizations are building momentum through community and transparency? Request a demo to see how monday.com could work for your team.
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