Uncomplicated Digital Solutions for Modern Community Development

Be it two-day shipping, ordering groceries online, or accessing medical records through an online portal, we’re accustomed to transparent, convenient, and speedy digital services. And today, it’s not just in private life that we look for the ease of online access; citizens expect the same level of digital efficient services from their governments as they experience in other avenues of their lives.  

Local agencies have been long eager to meet these demands but have struggled to keep up with private companies’ investments in tech due to tight resource constraints. But increasingly, governments are recognizing the immense power of integrated technologies, like land use platforms and electronic plan reviews, to enhance the citizen experience (CX), but also to boost efficiency and transparency within their own agencies.  

Citizens Historically Have Found Government Processes Obtuse 

One of the biggest headaches for citizens has been the confusing maze of rules and processes, especially in areas like building permits.  Often citizens and homeowners, commercial developers even, have felt their local agencies’ requirements are arbitrary or purposefully convoluted, creating frustration and generating a lack of confidence in their local government’s services.  

The shift towards digital solutions helps address these challenges by providing citizens with easy access to information and clear visibility into the status of their applications. With citizen resources, training modules, or even in-person support, jurisdictions ease any discomfort or unfamiliarity with new systems that often show up across generational lines.  

Internal Efficiencies Increase with Digitalization  

Streamlining community development services with integrated solutions isn’t just for the sake of citizens — local agencies that move to digital solutions reap enormous efficiency gains for their internal operations. Integrating the community development services platforms streamline workflows - like Avolve for plan review that connects to a wide number of permitting platforms. This enables agencies to eliminate redundancies, reduce errors, and shorten processing times, which result in cost savings and potential revenue growth for jurisdictions. 

Debuting digital services is also an effective way to increase citizen compliance with agency processes — further streamlining internal operations. By meeting citizens where they are, simplifying processes, and providing visibility into the status of applications, governments encourage more adoption of digital application processes for community development services.  

Fully Integrated Solutions Are a Must 

To enhance the citizen experience and create efficiencies at your local agency, jurisdictions need fully integrated solutions. Without a tight integration between permitting solutions and electronic plan review software, jurisdictions risk siloed information, a disjointed user experience, and potential privacy and security issues.  

Many local agencies select their ePlan review provider based on the strength of integration with their existing permitting solution. The gold standard integration is an embedded experience where users feel they are accessing a single solution and can smoothly transition between best-in-class technology manually passing documents between two systems.  

Want to learn more? For insider four tips on how to leverage technology to improve CX, download our insight paper How to Maximize the Use of Technology to Create the Ultimate Community Development Citizen Experience.