This past April, Oracle’s Permitting and Licensing team had the opportunity to attend and sponsor the National Planning Conference (NPC) hosted by the American Planning Association (APA) in Minneapolis, Minnesota. The National Planning Conference brings APA members together in order for members to continue to learn from the expertise and unique perspectives of industry experts and planning professionals.

While exhibiting at the conference, we were able to directly engage with APA members from a variety of municipalities and governments. Through our conversations with government professionals, we were able to discover several key themes.

 

The 3 key themes of the 2024 NPC:

  1. The need for Transformation: As governments grow and as citizens’ expectations for self-service technology increase, we kept hearing how governments are looking to not just modernize the way they work today but to transform and work smarter.  To achieve this, government agencies should view the implementation of new software not just as a technology project but an opportunity to also assess the people and processes that deliver regulatory services.  This can allow organizations to identify bottlenecks, implement best practices, and align their resources to provide more effective regulatory services.
  2. The search for a Complete Solution: Another common theme we heard repeatedly from planning and building professionals was how they often need multiple technology solutions to perform their jobs. This can create silos of data, disjointed processes, and a complex technology ecosystem.  For example:  We often heard how there was one solution for scheduling pre-planning meetings, another for submitting and processing applications, another for reporting, and so on.
  3. A stable, Long-Term Partnership: When talking to regulatory professionals about the software they are using today, they consistently spoke about being negatively impacted by disruption with their current software vendor.  Whether it’s mergers, acquisitions, outside investments, or the sunsetting of legacy products, customers are left with inadequate support and products that don’t meet their current or future needs.

 

How Oracle Permitting and Licensing addresses these themes:

Oracle Permitting and Licensing (OPAL) provides a modern community development cloud solution in the areas of planning and zoning, permitting, inspections, code enforcement, contractor registration, and business licensing. Below is how OPAL is addressing the themes we discovered at the NPC:

  1. Permitting and Licensing team at NPC 2024
    The need for Transformation:      OPAL is a fully integrated, modern permitting and licensing product that transforms the idea of what a digital experience with government should be. From scheduling pre-application meetings to easy to use, guided applications on any device to always-on digital assistants with generative AI capabilities, OPAL allows agencies to keep up with the demands of changing citizens’ expectations and technology.
  2. The search for a Complete Solution: OPAL is a complete regulatory business solution that is part of a larger suite of cloud applications for the government. It minimizes the need for third-party products with all-in-one offerings for each work group, like automatically creating configurable entitlement activities and setting SLA-based due dates for planners, tracking conditions of approval through the permitting lifecycle, and pre-integrated capabilities from Oracle’s technology ecosystem such as permit wizards and advanced analytics.
  3. A stable, Long-Term Partnership: As a technology leader with 40+ years of experience, Oracle got our start working alongside the public sector and continues that partnership today as a technology industry leader. Oracle’s stability as a publicly traded company ensures OPAL’s longevity in the market and insulation from the disruption that other companies in the regulatory software market often face. Plus, the resources we provide, such as 24/7 technical support, the breadth of our support tools and services, and the $6B in annual investment in R&D keeps us focused on customer success.

Our OPAL team was not only excited to attend the NPC but also hear from planning and building professionals in the field. By listening and learning from these professionals, we’re able to better understand their challenges in order to provide a leading regulatory software solution.

 

Learn More

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.