• Aside from familiarizing billions of people with the challenges of healthcare and the science of vaccine development, COVID-19 has also taught us the importance of data collection, interpretation, and transparency
• HS GovTech helps government agencies operate more efficiently by providing a revolutionary cloud platform that makes information digitally available to their citizens and businesses they regulate
• The company has pivoted beyond environmental and has now opened to markets among the sectors which include agriculture, public health, and fire departments
• Just as the COVID-19 pandemic has familiarized billions of people with the challenges of health care and the science of vaccine development, it has also introduced to the masses the importance of data collection, interpretation, and transparency.

The non-scientific public has closely watched datasets ranging from case counts and intensive care stats to wastewater COVID numbers.

At the height of the pandemic, many were glued to their favourite news sites or Twitter accounts, often daily, to gauge the severity of COVID’s impacts and determine how safe it was to be around groups of people or even to go to work.

At the same time, governments at all levels found themselves needing to quickly manage and share this data, while at the same time finding new ways to do business, often remotely.

But data is nothing new for HS GovTech Solutions Inc. (CSE: HS | OTC: HDSLF | Frankfurt: 38H).

In fact, for the SaaS company previously known as HealthSpace Data Systems Ltd, helping its governmental clients collect, manage, and share their data is its raison d'être.

An entire platform to help governments manage data

HS GovTech is committed to helping government agencies operate more efficiently with its revolutionary cloud platform that makes information digitally accessible to their citizens and the businesses they regulate.
 

“The vision has always been to provide an entire platform that serves not just the field inspectors but does every facet of data management.” – Silas Garrison, CEO, HS GovTech Solutions Inc.

When HealthSpace first started, it provided software that allowed government environmental health departments to perform their permitting, inspection, and enforcement duties. Newly rebranded HS GovTech has created an entire ecosystem of products that serves a range of government health and safety regulatory agencies, from restaurant inspections and agricultural to fire safety inspections, to customer billing and citizen engagement.

COVID-19 amplified the importance of data collection, interpretation, and transparency.

“The vision has always been to provide an entire platform that serves not just the field inspectors but does every facet of data management,” says CEO, Silas Garrison, a software engineer himself who pioneered the company’s market changing platform while previously serving as the company’s CTO.

“I also have a deep passion and love for serving the governmental market and there’s so much financial opportunity here,” he says. “Government spends a lot of money, yet is so often underserved.”

An ecosystem of complementary, cloud-based products

Indeed, HS GovTech is the largest independent provider of environmental health data management solutions in North America. The company’s suite of cloud-based products has been adopted by hundreds of municipal and county governments and their assorted agencies. The company also has the largest number of statewide contracts of any provider in this space which speaks to the power of their platform at scale. The line-up of products include:

• HSCloud, a fully configurable cloud platform for government agency data management

• HSTouch, a native mobile app which allows staff to easily conduct paperless field inspections— restaurants, farms, or other businesses — from anywhere, even offline

• MyHD, a public facing portal for licensing, bill payment and complaint submission

• HSPay, the company’s newest offering, is an online payment platform for government revenue collection for items such as health department regulatory fees and fines

and GovCall, which provides a fully integrated, interactive, communications platform allowing agencies to now perform remote inspections – which is one of many, likely permanent, changes brought on by the pandemic.  It also allows for governments to connect with their citizens remotely.

Word of mouth drives business

“Cloud software within government is not the default. Our solutions are very cutting edge,” Garrison says.

“Regardless of what the label of the department is,” he says, “they all have very similar needs and workflows, and they all have vast amounts of data that they need to make accessible, transparent and collaborative.”

Those parallel needs and word of mouth in the government sector have helped HS GovTech generate plenty of new business. For example, in California, where HS continues to expand its footprint, it has signed on the City of San Francisco and nearby Marin County, plus Sacramento and Sonoma counties in the northern part of the state as well as Orange and Riverside counties, and Anaheim Fire Department in SoCal.

“We are taking the information they’ve always had, we’re digitizing it, making it accessible, making it transparent, making it collaborative and easy,” Garrison says, noting that the company is getting excellent feedback from customers.

“It’s so much more than the data. The data is pieces of information, and that information, unless it’s supercharged and accessible, it’s meaningless. It’s all about what you do with the data you collect - it’s about going Beyond Data Management.”

Overall, the company has been part of more than 300 implementations across North America and has increased its overall revenue by approximately 300 per cent since late 2018.

Streamlining government payment collection

Its newest offering, HSPay, designed to streamline the intake of government revenue, is one business driver with the potential to significantly grow a new revenue stream over time. It is a free solution for governments to modernize their payment platform and is embedded in their data management system, connecting directly with accounting, invoicing, etc. HS GovTech collects a 0.5 to 1 per cent transaction fee with each purchase.

HS GovTech is seeing significant uptake since accelerating HSPay’s rollout following its launch on Oct. 29, 2021, and by the end of last year had deployed to eight customers, including the State of Virginia Department of Health and seven other counties across three states, with many more completed or in the works already in early 2022.

While some companies pivoted into healthcare verticals or businesses due to COVID, HS GovTech’s pivot beyond environmental health was natural, and has opened huge markets. For instance, among the sectors it is now serving are agriculture (with an addressable market Annual Recurring Revenue - ARR - of U.S. $20 million); public health (U.S. $180 million addressable market ARR); and fire departments (U.S. $2 billion addressable market ARR).

“Your workflows, your data, your information — it’s all very similar. They can and they should be using the exact same platform for unification, for transparency and collaboration,” Garrison says.

He also notes that not only does HS GovTech earn money selling its products, but it also gains additional revenue from the customization of those products for its various clients.

Government technology from the ground up

“There’s never been a better time to radically transform what it means to adopt technology in a governmental market,” Garrison says.

“Nobody has thought to approach government technology from the ground up for the modern age. That is what we are doing.”

And that is what makes HS GovTech a good investment, he says.

Looking back at a career in creating tools to help governments, Garrison notes there have been three major changes in how governments do business: The first was the use of external technology provided by private companies. The second was implementation and evolution of cloud-based technology. The third, due to the pandemic, is offering remote access tools and citizen engagement.

All three have combined to create an inflection point that he hopes will allow HS GovTech to be a dominant leader in its market for years to come.

Garrison likens his company’s suite of products to Microsoft Office, the ubiquitous business software package featuring Excel, Word, PowerPoint and more.

“We are doing the same thing for data management within government: We handle online payments, we handle citizen engagement, scheduling, mobile field apps, virtual inspections and video conferencing; we handle all this stuff in one seamless platform, and the whole nucleus is governments being able to manage their whole dataset within one cloud platform.”