How Online Permits Give Citizens Efficiency They Expect

The traditional permit process requires a lot of paperwork and foot traffic to and from the government body’s office. Added to this, paper-based permitting often leads to delays and reduced citizen satisfaction. If you would like to transform the traditional permitting process that you currently use and move into a seamless, online permitting process, we, at Ignatiuz, can help you out. Read on to know more!

An online permit portal allows vendors, builders, and residents to submit online permit applications directly through a digital portal. Citizens and vendors can also pay their fees through this portal. This can help tremendously because it is faster and more convenient, your staff will not be hassled by numerous paper applications and documents, and it is safer given that physical contact is greatly reduced.

Digital permit portals allow residents to submit different types of permits including road opening permits, zoning and grant planning permits, building permits, and tree removal permits.

If you’re still on the fence, we explain the benefits of using a digital permit portal below.

One of the biggest advantages of an online permit portal is that it helps residents and vendors save a significant amount of time. The process in its entirety will take between 10 and 20 minutes to complete using a digital permit portal. In comparison, with a traditional permit portal, citizens are required to travel to and from your office, wait for their turn to submit their permit application, and may even have to travel back to the office if they need to follow up on the status of their application. It also helps save time for your staff. With traditional paper-based permitting, your staff will need to spend a considerable amount of time interacting with citizens one after the other. Further, manually processing each permit application they receive will also take time. These are the challenges that you can tackle if you use Ignatiuz’s online permit portal.

E-permitting portals also enable staff to process online permit applications a lot faster, which, in turn, reduces the turnaround time significantly. An e permitting portal is instrumental in helping your staff process volumes of applications in a shorter period of time using automated workflows and an intuitive user interface. Added to this, Ignatiuz’s online permit portal also allows staff to check what stage the permit is at. This will tell your staff if the permit application is held up at a particular stage for longer than it should be. Thus, the chances of a permit application being held up because a particular employee was on leave or getting misplaced in a sea of documents are extremely low. Ignatiuz’s digital permit portal also allows your staff to view and process online permit applications through a mobile device, thus, helping them complete their inspections easily at their fingertips.

An online permit portal also increases the accountability of the staff since the higher management will always know at what stage of the permitting process different permit applications is at.

Traditional paper-based permitting requires printing of documents and handling and storing applications, sometimes for many decades. In comparison, an online permit portal is much more efficient because it eliminates the need for any paperwork. So, not only is online permitting faster but it is also a lot more convenient, given that citizens and your staff won’t have to handle applications and paperwork.

Given that the online permit portals, like the one offered by Ignatiuz, offer complete visibility into the process, a much shorter turnaround time, and greater convenience, it can be said without a doubt that online permit portals help improve citizen satisfaction. Digital permit portals also make it significantly easier for vendors to coordinate and work with government officials. This helps foster new developments in the community at a much faster pace.

The pandemic has made the need of the hour for businesses to adopt digital technologies. Using an online permit process right now is crucial because it helps keep staff and citizens safe from COVID-19. Applying for a permit usually requires people to travel to the government office, interact with officials there, and then submit the documents. This is not something that’s feasible or advisable today. So, make sure to use an online permit portal that will help people submit applications without physical contact.

Government agencies are often viewed as bottlenecks in the permitting process. When you use a traditional paper-based permitting process or a semi-automated process, you are presenting a number of challenges to both citizens and your staff. You can tackle the many challenges of paper-based permitting by using Ignatiuz’s digital permit portal.

Ignatiuz’s online permit portal is designed to reduce the turnaround time, help staff track and manage permit applications right from the time of intake upto project completion, and give complete visibility to both your employees and vendors during the permit process.

If you would like to automate the steps required to process permit applications such that people are able to submit online permit applications, give citizens an improved experience, and transform your community with new developments, reach out to Ignatiuz today to know how you can use the e-permitting portal.