The client is the Department of Transportation of one of the US states. They were overseeing services like highway maintenance, transit infrastructure, public safety programs and inter-agency coordination across multiple counties.
They have a team of thousands of employees and contractors working across different regions. The agency manages core transportation services that accommodate the needs of millions of travellers daily. While their operational scope was vast and well-established, they sought more structure and accountability in their internal governance processes.
Reasons for Collaboration
With the increasing pressure to adhere to federal mandates like FISMA and NIST 800-53, they were looking for a modernised approach to track compliance and manage risk. Their existing workflows were heavily dependent on a legacy system, manual forms and static spreadsheets. Policies weren’t tracked across departments, and internal audits often revealed issues with accountability.
They seek a system that provides them with a real-time view into their compliance posture, that enables them to respond confidently to state or federal audits. The expectations were clear: bring risk, policy and compliance management and tracking in one system and empowering teams to do things rightly and consistently.
Challenges
Inconsistent Regulatory Interpretation Across Departments: Aligning different teams on how to interpret and implement the regularly requirements was one of the huge challenges for them. Whilst they have implemented federal guidelines like NIST into their practices, individual departments still lack the clarity on what compliance means. This led to inconsistent implementations, duplicate efforts and occasional conflicts during audits when interpretations were poles apart from the set expectations.
Lack of Automation and Centralized Governance Exposing Critical Gaps: Another challenge was to manage outdated control, monitoring, and scattered policies and bring them all into one unified system. Many cybersecurity and vendor-related controls were tracked manually and reviewed yearly. There was no automated testing or alerts to catch early, which means problems often went unnoticed until an incident or audit occurred.
At the same time, 300+ internal policies were not properly managed across departments, which caused confusion, and employees were unknowingly following outdated procedures. Due to a lack of a centralized system, the agency became prone to unnecessary risks and compliance gaps.
Reactive Risk Management: Risks weren’t calculated prior to their occurrence; they only come into the spotlight when an issue gets discovered. Without a centralized risk register, departments were logging issues separately or not at all. There was no defined process to assess the potential impact of risks before they escalated into real problems.
Inefficient Vendor Risk Management Process: The client was facing difficulties managing vendor risks because their process was scattered and managed manually. Without a single, centralized system, evaluating and keeping track of third-party risks took a lot of time and was handled differently across departments. Vendor assessments, contract reviews, and risk mitigation were done through spreadsheets and emails, causing delays and making it hard to get a clear, real-time picture of how vendors were performing or complying with requirements.
Solutions
After assessing their requirements and goals, our ServiceNow Consultants implemented ServiceNow GRC. Here is what we offered them to address their challenges.
Standardized Interpretation Using Centralized Authority Documents: Our experts implemented ServiceNow GRC. We created the Authority Document and Control Objectives module, which was a centralised, agency-wide library of regulatory requirements. This module ensured that all departments were referring to the same authoritative sources when implementing control measures.
We also linked each control to its originating regulation. This made compliance interpretation consistent and traceable. Our team introduced regular review cycles and cross-functional workshops to align stakeholders on the regulatory requirements.
Implementing an Automated, Centralized Governance Platform: With ServiceNow GRC implementation, they got a centralized governance platform to automate control, monitor and manage policies. This platform enables continuous control testing and real-time alerts, which allow the agency to identify and address potential issues right when they occur, instead of waiting for the annual reviews.
By consolidating all policies into a single and easily accessible repository with capabilities like version control and automated update workflows, employees were always following the latest procedures. This unification improved transparency, ensured consistent compliance adherence across departments and reduced risks by streamlining governance processes as well.
Risk Register with Scoring and Mitigation Planning: Our experts implemented a central risk register integrated with department workflows to create and promote a proactive risk culture. Risks were assessed based on likelihood and impact, assigned owners and tracked through mitigation plans. This gave leadership a consistent way to evaluate organizational exposure across programs.
Streamlined Vendor Risk Management with ServiceNow GRC: ServiceNow GRC implementation also automated and centralized its vendor risk management process. With a single platform, they were now standardizing vendor assessments, contract reviews, and risk mitigation activities across all departments.
Automated workflows enabled timely risk evaluations and alerts, improving visibility into vendor compliance and performance in real-time. This centralized approach reduced manual effort, minimized delays, and helped enforce consistent policies.
Benefits
- Streamlined compliance audits with centralized documentation and evidence tracking
- Improved policy consistency across departments with controlled versioning
- Real-time risk visibility through dashboards and risk scoring tools
- Proactive control monitoring, reducing exposure to regulatory penalties
