From Excel Sprawl to Strategic Clarity: How Washington State Modernized IT Reporting

Across the US, state agencies face a dual reality: pressure to modernize digital services and shrinking budgets.

State CIOs and Enterprise Architects are being asked to do more with less. They must navigate significant budget shortfalls while managing layers of technical debt that threaten to stall innovation.

In a recent Ardoq webinar, “From IT Sprawl to Strategic Clarity,” we spoke with Raj Deol, Chief Enterprise Architect at the Washington State Department of Ecology, and McKenzie Baker, Senior Consultant at Slalom, to discuss how they are turning these macro-trends into an opportunity for transformation.

For Washington State Department of Ecology, the journey began with solving a universal public-sector headache: the annual mandated technology report.

The Problem: The Annual Reporting Nightmare

Like many state organizations, the Washington State Department of Ecology is required to submit a comprehensive list of applications and IT infrastructure to a central agency every year. This data is eventually sent to the state legislature to determine overall technology spend.

Historically, this was a painful process. It involved chasing down data across business units using multiple, burdensome Excel spreadsheets. The process relied on ad hoc workflows that were frustrating for staff and produced data that was often outdated upon submission.

Without a single source of truth, Ecology lacked the visibility needed to make strategic decisions or effectively argue for new funding. They needed a way to move from static lists to a living architecture.

The Solution: A "Day and Night" Difference

To solve the reporting challenge and build a foundation for Application Portfolio Management, Ecology implemented Ardoq. The shift from spreadsheets to a data-driven platform completely changed their operational dynamic.

According to Raj, the difference between the old manual methods and the new Ardoq workflow was "day and night".

1. Painless Data Collection

Instead of emailing spreadsheets, Ecology used Ardoq’s Broadcasts feature to send targeted surveys to application owners. The approach was user-friendly and significantly reduced the manual burden on the portfolio manager. Raj remarked that "using Ardoq, it was far less manual work for us to do compared to previous years."

2. Live Architecture Creation

The most immediate benefit was visibility. As soon as users submitted their survey responses, they could see the architecture being built in real time. Ardoq automatically generated views, relationships, and integrations based on their input.

3. Increased User Engagement and Buy-in

The platform's visual nature reshaped the culture around the process. Rather than seeing reporting as a compliance chore, staff became engaged. Raj noted that people started coming to office hours just to see the results, saying, "Hey, this is cool. We've not seen that before.”

This increased engagement resulted in high-quality, credible data, giving the EA team a solid foundation to begin identifying inefficiencies. It also helped position the EA team as a strategic bridge between business and IT within the organization.

"We got really good feedback from our program leaders; they feel like they haven’t had that level of engagement from IT before. So, it’s good to see that our Enterprise Architecture work is bridging the gap."

- Raj Deol, Chief Enterprise Architect at Washington State Department of Ecology

The Outcomes: Real Savings and Strategic Funding

With a clean inventory and a live view of their portfolio, the Department of Ecology could move beyond basic reporting to strategic optimization. The results were measurable and immediate.

1. Eliminating Redundant Tools

By visualizing their Commercial Off-the-Shelf (COTS) products, the team identified a "wild west" of duplicate tools purchased in silos.

• Immediate Reduction: They achieved a 10% to 15% reduction in COTS tools shortly after analyzing the portfolio.
• Future Savings: As they continue to identify overlapping functionality, they anticipate a further 30% to 50% reduction over the next six to eight months.

2. Optimizing Infrastructure Costs

The benefits extended beyond software to infrastructure. The team used Ardoq to model a detailed data storage architecture plan. By analyzing two specific servers and applying a tiered storage architecture, they identified approximately $80,000 in annual direct savings.

3. Successfully Securing New Funding

Perhaps most importantly, better data improved their standing with the legislature. In a tight fiscal environment, every dollar must be justified.

Because Ecology could use Ardoq to prove they had rationalized their portfolio and identified capability gaps, their budget requests carried more weight. The EA team collaborated on an innovation package submission that was not only funded but was ranked as the number one package for innovation.

Collaborating with Key Partners to Empower States

Transformation at the state level rarely happens in isolation. Most agencies depend on an interconnected ecosystem of partners—strategic advisors, procurement vehicles, and technology providers—to deliver real change.

Ardoq’s key partnerships with Slalom and Celonis have helped accelerate time-to-value and bring specialized expertise to every engagement.

Slalom: Building the Framework for Modernization

Ecology is just one example of how Slalom has been instrumental in helping agencies establish statewide EA standards and align them with transformation roadmaps.

Slalom and Ardoq have partnered to define statewide EA frameworks that not only rationalize application portfolios but also link technology investments to strategic outcomes. In Oregon, for example, Oregon State Lottery has used Ardoq to gain visibility into risk and navigate IT complexity. Mackenzie remarked that,

“It’s been really powerful to switch from that Excel world to the Ardoq world. Before Slalom started using Ardoq for our engagements, we were really primarily using Excel to go through AppRat. So this has been hugely helpful even for us to expedite our time to deliver value.”

What’s Next: Evolving Towards “One Ecology”

Ecology has already achieved incredible success in optimizing their IT but they have their sights set on expanding beyond compliance, to explore how EA drives better decisions and roadmapping for the rest of the organization. Some of the initiatives in their pipeline include:

• Using business capability modeling aligns organizational units with business units and IT, breaking away from a siloed “org chart” mindset and driving a unified enterprise approach.
• Improved strategic technology roadmapping for programs informed by the insights Ardoq can give them on critical interdependencies in the organization

Even though they’re still defining their enterprise capability model, they’ve already gained greater clarity and insight into capability gaps, such as business lines lacking appropriate IT support and specific skill sets the organization needs to acquire.

A Model for State Agencies

The challenges facing the Washington State Department of Ecology—budget pressure, reporting mandates, and tech debt—are not unique. They are the reality for agencies across the country and their success stands to be a model for a better, more efficient way forward for other state departments.

By moving away from static spreadsheets and adopting a data-driven approach to Enterprise Architecture, Ecology turned a compliance burden into a strategic advantage. They didn't just report on their IT landscape; they optimized it.

Want to hear more about how they achieved these results?