Governor Moore Announces Modernized Digital Platform for State Regulations, Promising Greater Efficiency and Transparency

Per a press release issued by the Office of Governor Wes Moore, the State of Maryland has officially implemented a major modernization of the online platform hosting the Code of Maryland Regulations, commonly known as COMAR. This critical resource, which compiles the state’s administrative rules and legal statutes, is utilized monthly by over 100,000 users, including state agencies, courts, businesses, law firms, libraries, and private citizens who rely on accurate access to state law. The upgrade focuses on enhancing public access and transparency while significantly improving government efficiency by automating previously manual processes.

The newly launched system replaces a prior platform that was often hindered by formatting errors, inconsistent search results, and general technological bugs. The primary objective of this overhaul is to allow Marylanders to reference regulations impacting their daily lives much more easily, whether they are small business owners reviewing necessary labor requirements or families navigating complex applications for assistance such as student loans or unemployment insurance. The platform now offers enhanced usability through a completely redesigned interface, featuring significantly improved search capabilities and intuitive navigation. The public can now benefit from seamless links between related statutes and regulations, alongside reliable capabilities for clean printing, making COMAR substantially more accessible for general public use than before.

A significant aspect of this modernization involves increasing efficiency within state operations and fulfilling the administration’s goal to streamline government internal workflows. Under the former system, Division of State Documents staff, housed within the Office of the Secretary of State, dedicated considerable manual effort to maintain and update the regulations, a process that required repeatedly downloading, editing, and uploading documents. The new platform drastically reduces this administrative burden by automating the core regulatory drafting and publishing processes. This automation is expected to save valuable staff time and resources, contributing to making government operations more efficient and cost-effective, which ultimately helps conserve taxpayer funds by reducing reliance on tedious manual work.

The state has embraced modern technological standards by making the entire COMAR dataset available in open-source, computer-readable XML format. This machine-readable format is standard in the technology industry and allows sophisticated users and organizations to integrate the state data with various external technological systems, including potential future models based on artificial intelligence. This advanced technological foundation lays the groundwork for Marylanders to develop new methods for understanding and tracking shifts and changes in state laws and regulations with greater speed and accuracy. The updates were made possible through a collaboration between the Maryland Secretary of State’s Office and the Maryland Digital Service, an entity established by Governor Moore specifically to improve efficiency, transparency, and accessibility in digital government functions. The state also partnered with the Open Law Library, a nonprofit dedicated to building open-source legal publishing and legislative drafting software.

Ensuring the public has complete and unwavering confidence in the authenticity of the legal code was a primary consideration during development. The State of Maryland is implementing security technology known as The Archive Framework (TAF), which was first introduced by researchers at New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering. This sophisticated cryptographic system is specifically designed to detect any unauthorized tampering and preserves historical versions of legal documents, thereby providing a crucial layer of security for the COMAR platform. This system is intended to prevent bad actors, whether external hackers or malicious insiders, from secretly changing the legal text. By guaranteeing that the laws citizens are reading are authentic and unaltered, TAF protects the integrity of the regulatory system and upholds essential principles of transparency in governance.

This major platform overhaul is noted as the first of many such projects being led by the Maryland Digital Service, signaling a sustained effort to modernize key state government systems. Residents and professionals who utilize the state regulatory code should transition to the new online platform, which is currently available immediately at regs.maryland.gov. The current, older COMAR site, hosted at dsd.maryland.gov, is scheduled for deactivation and removal in early 2026.

Article by Mel Anara, based upon information from the Office of Governor Wes Moore

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