Rhode Island leads the nation with statewide ePermitting initiative
Rhode Island may be our smallest state—but it’s leading the country in a big way.
Microsoft CityNext is proud of our partner ViewPoint Government Solutions for implementing the nation’s first single statewide online permitting initiative. According to Alex Pajusi, ViewPoint’s chief technology officer, Rhode Island “saw that ePermitting could be best achieved when an entire state bands together.” The result is the Azure-powered ViewPoint Cloud, which puts permitting and licensing online, making it accessible anywhere, anytime, from any device.
Last July, ViewPoint and Rhode Island signed a contract and began configuring ViewPoint Cloud to meet the needs of 10 pilot municipalities (Cranston, Pawtucket, Newport, Warwick, North Kingstown, West Warwick, North Providence, Westerly, North Smithfield and Woonsocket) as well as the office of the State Fire Marshal and State Building Code Commissioner. “We were able to go from contract signing to first go-live in just six months,” Alex said, adding that Phase One is scheduled to roll out Feb. 1 and will focus primarily on trades permits (building, fire, electrical, mechanical, plumbing).
Alex credited Rhode Island’s ePermitting innovation and success thus far to “statewide leadership and competent project management,” specifically acknowledging Rhode Island Chief Digital Officer Thom Guertin and the Municipal Advisory Council on Statewide Permitting. “ePermitting is a new idea—only about a quarter of municipalities in the country offer any kind of ePermitting,” he explained. “This is the first time that a state has built a single online permitting platform, with the goal of streamlining the permitting process across all communities.” Mayor Donald Grebien of Pawtucket, chairman of the Municipal Advisory Council on Statewide Permitting, noted: “We are creating a more business-friendly atmosphere in Rhode Island, which will ensure that high-value construction projects are protected from the needless and excessive building permit process.”
Another unique aspect of Rhode Island’s implementation: looking at every step of the permitting process to see how it can be improved. “(Rhode Island is) examining every aspect of that workflow to ensure they’re applying best practices,” he said. “This serves as a real model initiative for the nation.”
Rhode Island’s new ePermitting system will transform today’s manual, paper-based process. “The goal is to provide a citizen access portal—a website—where constituents in Rhode Island can go online and apply for, pay for and track trades permits from beginning to end,” Alex said. The ViewPoint Cloud platform also can extend to encompass everything from online licensing to vital records (birth and death certificates). “All of these citizen services at city hall can be automated with our platform,” he said, adding that Providence, an enthusiastic early adopter of the project, is working to automate licenses and vital records in the first half of 2016.
The ViewPoint platform is built on the “best-in-class security and reliability” of Microsoft Azure, Alex said. “I want to emphasize how important the Azure platform plays into (ViewPoint Cloud). Azure allowed us to quickly move from an on premise application to the cloud. Enough can’t be said about how important Azure played into this strategy.”
During the month of February, ViewPoint will take an incremental approach to implementing the new ePermitting system in the 10 pilot municipalities and two state agencies. While the roll out is one of the fastest of its size, Alex reinforced “we’ll make sure each municipality becomes successful.”
After that, the rest of Rhode Island’s cities and towns will have their own timing to move off legacy systems and onto the statewide ePermitting platform. “We’ve had several meetings with representatives of every municipality in the state; they’re incredibly excited about this,” Alex said. As is ViewPoint Government Solutions: “We’re looking forward to bringing ViewPoint Cloud to more and more communities around the country.”
Jeff Friedman, eGovernment Director, Microsoft
Jeff Friedman is Microsoft’s eGovernment Director in the State and Local Government Solutions Group. He was most recently the Co-Director and Co-Founder of the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics for Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter. Previously, Friedman was the Manager of Civic Innovation & Participation in the Mayor’s Office. He led various initiatives to make city government (and urban governance generally) more open, participatory, transparent, entrepreneurial, and innovative. Previously, Friedman was Chief of Staff to the Chief Technology Officer in the Division of Technology, and before that he was Deputy Director of Performance Management/Implementation Manager for Philly311 in the Managing Director’s Office. Prior to joining city government, Friedman consulted to state, local, and county governments across the nation at Public Financial Management, a national consultancy. He earned his undergraduate and law degrees from Temple University.
