Maryland Business Express

Maryland Pinnacle Award for Business Development Nomination: Maryland Business Express

Contact Information of Individual Submitting Nomination

Nominator: Erin Roth

Agency Name : State of Maryland Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation

Maryland Business Express

The primary focus of Maryland's nomination is an "Innovative Framework."

Maryland Business Express is an innovative, business-facing website designed to dramatically simplify the process of accessing diverse public resources by intuitively organizing the website within the plan, start, manage, grow framework of the business lifecycle. The website draws together diverse resources from all of the following Maryland state agencies to facilitate integrated, streamlined service delivery:

Department of Assessments and Taxation
Department of Education
Department of Information Technology
Office of the Maryland Secretary of State
Department of Commerce
Maryland Higher Education Commission
Maryland Insurance Administration
Governor's Office of Small, Minority, and Women Business Affairs
Office of the Comptroller of Maryland
Department of Human Services
Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation
Department of Transportation
Department of Veterans Affairs

The innovative business lifecycle framework of Maryland Business Express helps businesses conveniently find and use publicly-available resources. The website flips the script on the bureaucracy that can sometimes make government systems difficult for businesses to use, leveraging and recasting a wide range of assets in language businesses understand, and helping businesses to quickly navigate to the specific resources they need, when they need them.

Statement of results, accomplishments, impacts and any other appropriate information that demonstrates why the nominee's efforts were an exceptional contribution.

Maryland Business Express is a practically-designed, user-friendly asset map that allows businesses to virtually leverage a full compliment of public services. The creation of the online portal has exponentially expanded the ability of public agencies to reach businesses and support their success - a high-impact contribution to the state's workforce system's service capacity, given that the workforce system already annually serves more than 7000 employers and provides in excess of 35,000 services through local workforce development areas. Business services that can be accessed through Maryland Business Express include Maryland's Workforce Exchange, where employers can list openings, conduct online talent searches, and research labor market and workforce information. Through Maryland Business Express, users can easily wend their way to government and community agencies, local educational and training organizations, and can connect with money saving incentive programs using federal and state tax credits. From the same, single home page, users can navigate to the Internal Revenue Service for forms, apply for licenses and permits, and explore business networking opportunities. The thoughtful, innovative structure of Maryland Business Express is an exceptional solution that filled a very real void for businesses seeking public sector assistance.

Other significant contributions

In addition to creating an "innovative framework", we also recognize Maryland Business Express as an "innovative initiative", because the effort brought together state agencies in a new way to focus on the needs of businesses.

Navigating complex government systems can be difficult for business owners: agencies may be siloed and government-ese can be daunting to understand. To bridge the bureaucratic divide, Maryland's Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation worked closely with Maryland's Department of Commerce over the course of many months to bring the Maryland Business Express website to fruition, activating new links with thirteen state agencies and focusing with a unique business lens.