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DBI hears progress report on Accela permit system rollout
Summary
The Department of Technology and DBI staff reported progress on Accela implementation: hundreds of fixes completed, pretesting underway, and features such as related records, attachments and cloning aimed at improving permit search and public access. Commissioners urged outreach to long‑time users for performance data.
The Building Inspection Commission received a detailed update on Feb. 20 about the department’s Accela permit and project‑tracking implementation and testing schedule.
Henry Bartley of the Department of Technology said the project team closed and accepted 337 UAT items in the past 30 days, with 118 items ready for testing and 94 still in development. Pretesting for UAT 3.1 had begun and user acceptance testing by DBI staff was planned to follow. Bartley said the numbers of outstanding tickets are dropping month to month and that the team will report readiness to DBI leadership at the end of the pretest period.
Bartley outlined technical benefits observed in other city deployments: a unified single database for all record types (building, plumbing, electrical and planning) to simplify searches; related‑records links to connect associated trade permits and complaints; the ability to attach inspection reports and third‑party letters to permit records; and cloning to duplicate common fields for repeat permit filings. He said system attachments will reduce reliance on separate network drives and file cabinets and improve public access through a web interface.
Commissioners asked for case studies and data from other jurisdictions. Commissioner Walker offered to share contacts from Salt Lake City, and Commissioner Warshall and staff noted outreach to long‑time Accela users to collect efficiency metrics. Public commenter Jerry Drentler asked whether the system will accept smartphone photos as complaint attachments; Assistant Director Ron Tom and staff said the software can accept attachments but that DBI must develop policies addressing privacy, verification of externally submitted photos and public‑records handling before broadly accepting them.
Bartley said he will share customer‑success materials with DBI staff and continue testing and outreach; commissioners urged setting realistic efficiency targets and continuing vendor and peer‑jurisdiction engagement before launch.
