Cities and County Join Forces for Coordinated Permitting System

Seattle, WA, June 24, 2003 – With the adoption this month of the Permitting and Licensing System developed for Kitsap County by Paladin Data Systems spin-off InterLocking Software, the contiguous area of Kitsap County will soon be serviced by a single coordinated permitting data system. The only area in the county not using the system will be Bainbridge Island.

The Permit and Licensing system has been in use by Kitsap County for over a year now. The City of Bremerton became fully operational earlier this month, and the City of Poulsbo will be on-line next month. Just a few weeks later the City of Port Orchard should be on-line. Computers at Kitsap County’s data center are providing the service for the cities for only a minimal equipment procurement and maintenance fee. “The flexibility to have multiple jurisdictions use the same data system in differing ways simultaneously is a very unique feature.” said system architect Brian Borchers. Though sharing a common system with the county, each city has its own independent financial information, permitting rules, process workflow, and web portals.

Robert Johnston, InterLocking Software’s Chief Operating Officer reported at a recent meeting of the Port Orchard City Council that “Since switching from their manual system to the fully computerized system the County has seen a huge drop in the amount of time required to find, update and process permits. The amount of time required to process a county permit for a single-family home has been cut nearly in half, from 49 days to 26 days. In addition, the time it takes to do an inspection on a permit-related matter has dropped by half as well.”

Johnston continued, “The system can also do things that would be impossible on paper. For instance, staff can pull up a map of the parcel in question, then peel back layers of land-use designations to view the property’s relation to neighboring parcels and critical areas. The maps can show streets, neighboring parcel numbers and owners, terrain changes and slope, wetlands, streams and other potential areas of concern.”

Tom Hickey, InterLocking’s VP of Sales said “A number of other cities and counties in the pacific northwest are watching the success of the system in Kitsap County. We will soon be deploying the system at the city of University Place, and have a number of cities and counties, primarily in Washington and Idaho, looking at how much money they can save by implementing this more efficient, multi-jurisdictional software.”