Online Permit Viewer

About the Program

Category: Planning (Best in Category)

Year: 2021

Included in the Maricopa County Strategic Plan for FY 2019 – 2022, is a robust initiative to become an all-digital County by delivering online and mobile public access to County services and increasing the public’s usage of web-based permitting tools. To meet this goal, the Planning and Development Department worked in collaboration with the Office of Enterprise Technology (OET) to create an Online Permit Viewer. This viewer visualizes planning and development data on an attractive, easy to use map. The map is updated daily and pulls data directly from Accela, the department’s software solution for permit creation and tracking. Users can access information on the viewer 24 hours a day, 365 days a year and even submit code violation complaints.The online permit viewer was designed and is maintained in-house which allows for customization and expansion to other departments. By increasing public accessibility, the Planning and Development Department has seen a reduction in call volume and number of public records requests. Since the viewer went live in February 2019, the number of unique hits for a one-month period rose steadily. In August 2019, just six months after implementation, there were 1,099 unique events, which includes hits on the landing page, searches and widget use. At the 1-year mark, that number jumped to 2,940 unique events for the month of February 2020 and during the COVID-19 pandemic the unique events have skyrocketed to 11,295.