Three key themes from the Building Officials of Florida Conference 2024

The Oracle Permitting and Licensing team had an excellent opportunity to exhibit at the Building Officials Association of Florida’s annual conference (BOAF) in early June. After three days in sunny Orlando, Florida amidst the hundreds of dedicated Community Development professionals, our team learned a lot from engaging with the conference attendees as it relates to the legacy software they use today.

Although the quantity of conversations was quite extensive, the central themes within most of those chats were echoed by the conference attendees. Building Officials across the state are experiencing difficulties that are directly affecting their operational efficiencies. The tools that their agency has purchased and spent coveted budgetary dollars on, just aren’t getting the job done, and in fact, are creating workarounds that are counter-productive at best.

Below are the three themes we learned about at BOAF 2024:

1. Legacy solution outages

Technology has become incredibly dependable, so it can be highly frustrating when it becomes unavailable.  For the government, it can bring work for both agency staff and their constituents (i.e. permit applicants) to a grinding halt.  Not being able to provide services negatively affects agency performance, impacts the goals and timeline of the applicant, and delays crucial revenues. So when we heard that legacy software solutions operating in the cloud have experienced significant outages, attendees were understandably frustrated.

Oracle Permitting and Licensing operates on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, a market leader in performance and reliability. Our software comes with a 99.9% service level agreement (SLA) for uptime, which translates into 8 hours and 41 minutes of unplanned downtime each year.  Since OPAL was launched in late 2018, it has always met its annual SLA, providing customers with peace of mind that it will be available to them.

2. Expanding virtual technologies beyond ‘Inspections’

Back in 2021, the State of Florida passed a new law allowing for Building Inspections to be executed virtually. Since then, agencies across the state have been looking for ways to not only take advantage of this new flexibility but also to grow beyond just doing Inspections virtually. One of the main goals of every government agency is to improve processing and turn-around times for applications from start to finish. Virtual meetings can be utilized for so much more than just Inspections.  Agencies see this need and are looking for options.

Oracle Permitting and Licensing offers extensibility tools, open APIs, and our industry-leading Oracle Integration Cloud[1] to allow each customer to use their agency’s desired virtual meeting tool.  And with delivered features that encourage virtual meetings and collaboration, such as pre-planning consultations, business consultations, collaborative permit and plan reviews, and more, agencies can become more efficient and become better at serving their constituents.

3. Ever-changing regulatory needs

If there is one thing in the life of a Building Official that is constant, it is change. Regulatory needs are constantly changing. New state mandates, local ordinances, expectations from the communities they serve, and adapting to modern technologies all drive change within a government agency. Community Development professionals are constantly looking to enhance the quality and efficiency of their operations. They shouldn’t be held back by the software they are using. They should be empowered by it.

Unfortunately, the ability to adapt is consistently being hamstrung by the lack of modern features in legacy software solutions. Technology built 30 years ago has become stagnant and is no longer effective. Their architectures are brittle and processing rules are hard to update. Government agencies need a software vendor that stays one step ahead of the changing trends in the regulatory market, not many steps behind.

Oracle Permitting and Licensing offers the most configurable solution in the market. Our solution was built with ease of use in mind, designed for specific work groups within regulatory agencies, and provides the flexibility to adapt and scale accordingly. Managing the solution is just as easy as using it on a day-to-day basis. With no coding or scripting required to administer the solution, gone are the days of having to wait for a support request to be satisfied or for another department within the agency to act. Agency staff can build, change, and modify their solution to their own liking at any time. In addition, Oracle Permitting and Licensing offers quarterly updates, releasing 30-40 new features with each update, with an average of 65% of new features being requested or influenced by customers’ feedback.  This demonstrates not only our commitment to delivering continuous improvement but also the value we put on our customers.

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Modern cloud technology solutions can help public-sector organizations overcome many of the challenges they face. By migrating to the cloud with Oracle Permitting and Licensing, organizations can embrace innovation and push the limits of what their employees and constituents have come to expect from their government.  Oracle is excited to be able to partner with government organizations on their journey to the cloud, and you can discover more about Oracle’s Permitting and Licensing solution here.