San Francisco to consolidate permit systems with new PPTS portal; December rollout targeted

San Francisco planning and building officials told a joint meeting of the Planning Commission and Building Inspection Commission that the city will replace several legacy permit systems with a single platform, often identified in the presentations as PPTS (Accelera/Exela). Henry Bartley, project manager with the Department of Technology, said the platform will provide a single master data source for both departments and a public-facing Citizen Access Portal for searches, applications and an enforcement tab.

The portal will let members of the public search projects, view project status and application histories, and—if registered—apply for certain permits online, according to Glenn Cabarrus, the Planning Department's project business lead. "One of the beauties of this search result is actually these are live links," Cabarrus said, describing how a user can click from a search to a detailed record that shows work location, applicant, zoning and processing status.

Staff described a staged launch: final data migration is the immediate priority, followed by staff training in late fall and public outreach. "We're on the home stretch," a project presenter said, listing data migration, staff training and public outreach as the last key activities; staff named Lily (DBI) and Gina (Planning) as leads for outreach and said public activities are planned in early November and citizen outreach timed with the portal in December.

Project leads emphasized operational benefits. Bartley said Exela will reduce handoffs that create failure points by providing one code base used by hundreds of other agencies, which can speed future enhancements and reduce the need for department-specific patches. He said the common platform should make routine changes (for example fee adjustments or legislative-driven changes) faster to implement than the older, multi-system architecture.

Commissioners pressed staff on what record fields and visual tools will be available publicly. Lehi Cabrera, a Planning Department staff member working on the project, said the portal will include GIS search and link to the Planning Department's Property Information Map. Cabrera said the system captures an audit trail of every person and applicant touch point on a case, which staff can use to report where delays originate.

Several commissioners asked whether the public portal will show project cost and scope. Cabarrus said cost and scope fields already exist in the back-end data model and that any public exposure of that field will be evaluated before launch; he also confirmed that plan sets, notices of enforcement and other documents can be uploaded and associated with records for public viewing.

Staff cautioned that data migration and training remain work in progress and that some implementation risks persist. They repeated that the effective public rollout will be phased; DBI training is scheduled in November and the broader public portal outreach will follow. Commissioners requested follow-up reporting on who is pulling large permit volumes, how the portal will make permit backlog and processing times transparent, and whether the system will support audits of permit valuation and fee fairness.

The meeting concluded with staff commitments to return with more detailed demonstrations and post-launch reports on initial system performance.