There is a reason most IT initiatives fail, especially in government where budgeting is necessarily fixed. The community development department staff needs to come up with permitting software requirements and plan for an annual budget. The building permit software requirements determine a scope for the work the permitting software or licensing software vendor is to perform. Once the scope is complete the traditional permitting software vendor needs to move on to the next project and the community development staff is stuck with whatever was delivered for the budget. The permitting software vendor typically provides support within the project scope to fix bugs or issues under a maintenance agreement. During a permitting software of licensing software project understanding of the requirements often change, sometimes community development department staff changes and the perception of software scope or requirements change. Technology can also change and oftentimes there are good ideas that will help improve permitting and licensing processes and customer service to citizens. What if these ideas weren’t developed or understood and stated in the scope and requirements?
With Citizenserve the hardware and community development software implementation is already complete. It literally takes minutes to setup your permitting software installation, create departments and users. We can jump right into setting up permit and license applications, fees, workflows, system outputs, etc. Because we cut out most of the doldrums of the traditional software model being an internet based software or g-government cloud based software and service we can offer unlimited support for our customers. This means there is only an initial scope and new requirements are included in the subscription. This is one of the reasons Citizenserve has never had a failed implementation.
Critical success factors during implementation of permitting software and licensing software include:
1) Getting us the permitting and licensing information we need at the beginning of the setup.
2) Making sure key stakeholders and key users are attending setup meeting and walk-through.
3) There is always some resistance to change and disagreements among staff members. Strong executive sponsorship is necessary to lead the troops to the finish line.
