It’s simple to question whether society benefits when governments require people to get a permit or license to engage in almost each activity. Why, for example, do most places require people get a license before they can cut hair or put a shed in the back yard?
But if governments are going to require licenses for such things, they have the ability to at least make it relatively easy for qualified people who cough up the requisite fees to acquire such licenses.
The city of Houston apparently concurs with this philosophy because it’s upgrading its Web site such that citizens can get almost any license or permit at any hour of day without setting foot in a government office.
Houston signed a contract back in May with GovPartner, a company that builds such e-permitting systems and reports speedy progress on the Houston project:
Working in record time, the GovPartner team completed Phase 1 by migrating the City from its old mainframe system to the advanced, 100% .NET web-based CommunityDevelopmentPartner system. By July, the migration was complete, customizations were added to fit Houston’s specific processes and staff were trained.
The next phase in the CommunityDevelopmentPartner project is to establish an on the web portal that allows the community to finish the entire process on the web from work or home via simple point and click.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Entries (RSS)