About the Building Permits Tracker
The Permit Tracker consists of a suite of eight web based geospatial applications which support the operations of the building permits and the building inspections. In real time, they integrate the field activities of the inspectors, the office activities of staff, and the Automatic Telephone Request system into a single geospatial web framework.
Builders, contractors, homeowners, and homebuyers can now monitor the entire process of construction, from start to finish, from their homes or offices in real time. They can view the results of plan examinations, can schedule inspections, view inspection results, and identify staff assigned to their construction site. For each of the last 25 years and up to the minute, anyone can create maps that are dynamically linked to the full history of building permits and inspections in Alachua County. For each of the last 25 years and up to the minute, anyone can create maps and download reports in Excel or Text format for building activities, inspections, field entry results, and telephone messages for a specific area of the county.
Innovation
In contrast with the traditional procurement standards of US local governments, this suite of applications was created with an Open Technology and a Participatory Design approach. It was conceived, designed, developed, and implemented by the GIS Division of the Alachua County Growth Management Department. During the entire process, the GIS Division engaged building clerks, building inspectors, code inspectors, other county employees, local builders, contractors, and representatives from the Builders Association. They were all active participants in various roles, from the inception of the applications till their final testing and implementation.
As this product is not owned by a proprietary vendor and it is fully copyrighted by Alachua County, all related costs have been saved. The upfront acquisition costs for similar suites of vendor products approximate at $500,000. Consecutive yearly costs for the lifetime of the product, on license fees, maintenance, support, training, and royalties approximate at $50,000 per year.
Players
Too many are the people that played a pivotal role in this effort. Some with wisdom and advice, some with trust and enthusiasm. Many with hard work and dedication, others with approval and collegial affirmation. Trying to name them all would be a certainty to forget plenty. But this effort would have not materialized were it not for Carol Hurst, Alachua County's veteran Building Official. She understood its value before it even started. She shaped an environment that stimulated everyone's best, cheerfully untangling every knot along the way. Tim Clark, the GIS Systems Programmer, was the magician behind the curtains.
Organizational Impact
This effort embodies the transformation strategies approved by the County Commission in the year 2000 for guiding our organizational development:
- Empower employees and citizens
- Implement technology that serves the organization
- Improve systems of management and accountability
The current web usage of this suite of applications shows 700 to 800 transactions per day. The implementation of this project, in addition to encreasing efficiency for the building community and the residents at large, has also improved performance in six departments in the County. Performance indicators for the Building Division show significant impact on budgetary savings, as these applications have streamlined the daily operations of the Building Division, including use of laptops and printers in inspectors' vehicles.
Technical Specifications
This suite of applications is hosted using Windows Server 2003 and Microsoft IIS 6 web server. Webpages are written in the PHP 5 scripting language and connected to a MySQL 5 database for data storage used by many of our web applications. GIS and RDBMS data are stored on a separate data server. RDBMS data is stored in Oracle 10g and the geospatial data is stored in ArcSDE 9.2. All data updates are displayed in real-time on the web. GeoWeb Applications use ArcIMS 9.2. Webpages have been coded by hand using the free careware Arachnophilia.
