From Paper Maps to Navigation Apps: Charting a New Course in Permitting Tech
By Andrew Salmon, Jessie Mahr, and Christopher Putney
Historical federal investments in climate resilience, clean energy, and new infrastructure will all hinge on the government’s ability to efficiently permit, site, and build key projects. That’s why EPIC and the Federation of American Scientists (FAS) are collaborating on strategies and resources to help accelerate permitting innovation. Interested in learning more about this work? Check out our latest blog and learn more here.
Environmental permitting is notoriously slow, resource-intensive, and opaque—and often disconnected from measurable outcomes that benefit the public, the government, or our environment. It can take an average of 4.5 years to get an infrastructure project through the permitting process. Even simpler projects often take years, and fewer than 5% of government permitting decisions receive any public input at all.
Recognizing the importance of speeding up environmental permitting for the nation's environmental and climate resilience goals, the the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ) just delivered its first “Permitting Portal Study” to Congress. The report details the potential for digital technologies to accelerate permitting reviews, assist government agencies, and improve overall public accessibility across the permitting lifecycle. It also highlights current use of permitting tech across agencies, as well as recent funding dedicated to developing new technologies.
The thrust of CEQ’s approach to digital permitting “portals” is a modern one: the report makes the case that agencies should maintain tools designed to meet their particular permitting needs—but at the same time, enable better permitting data collation and access so that projects can be tracked uniformly by implementing data standards. Permitting process-wise, that would be a marked change in today’s status quo.
What are data standards, and why are they important enough to be mentioned 48 times in this report?
Imagine if every state used a different color code for traffic lights. One state might use tan, orange, and blue, another, red, white, or purple—and the other 48 states, their own unique color combinations. This would obviously pose a major threat to drivers. In reality, a “data standard” for traffic lights—which 100% of states and 95% of countries have adopted—is the wise agreement to use one red-yellow-green scheme; in effect making it easier for everyone to avoid accidents and get where they’re going.
Unfortunately, in environmental permitting, we’re closer to having 50 states with their own unique color combinations. It’s time to adopt common rules for how permitting information is organized, stored, and shared—and we need to do so if we’re actually going to realize our national environmental goals. That’s why the one of the most important things CEQ gets right in this report is around data standards. It recommends federally permitted projects follow standards that would give agencies and the public the ability to track a project from start to finish, know specifically what type of project is being proposed, and understand the complexity of that project.
The Permitting Council’s FAST-41 Permitting Dashboard is an exemplary pilot project on this score: it applies cross-agency data standards and a consistent visualization for better record-keeping and public access to project information. The dashboard displays the most basic facts about projects being permitted—yet it’s still revolutionary to have that information digitally collected and available for every project. The Permitting Council also built the dashboard in less than a year, illustrating that we don’t have a high enough bar when it comes to permitting technology goals.
Screenshots of the permitting dashboard’s infrastructure project permitting timelines and related details (e.g., Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) status).
Still, record keeping is not enough.
The permitting dashboard was a necessary–and long overdue—first step; but it’s not enough on its own. That’s because the most significant tech-enabled permitting time and cost reduction gains will be made through dynamic decision support applications, and by overhauling standard operating procedures. Consider GPS, for example.
On a daily basis, most of us use decision support tools in navigating the city using apps like GoogleMaps or Waze. Navigation tools go beyond just orienting us to where we are in the city, but provide directions, estimate travel times, predict the most fuel efficient route, factor traffic and weather patterns into routes, and visualize easy to read maps. We constantly generate, and through the apps, utilize, real-time data to make informed decisions. In other words, the technology is practically useful to users in dozens of mundane yet helpful ways.
Today, permitting tools are mostly missing that goal for their most frequent and potential users—agency permitting staff and infrastructure project leaders. In place of Waze or GoogleMaps, a more apt analogy for most permitting tools would be a delivery driver using a hand-drawn paper atlas—staring down at one neighborhood at a time, scribbling their own routes, and driving erratically as they try to decipher how to deliver the food before it gets cold. Sure, the driver technically has relevant information at their fingertips, but they’re going at it alone—without up-to-date, actionable data baked into their route, or the benefit of automated workflows. The truth is that permitting technology lags about 30 years behind the navigation tools we all use, and there’s no reason that should remain the case.
CEQ’s report is a great first step in changing this paradigm, and we commend them for pointing to related components that will bring this change to fruition. With a few extra steps, we can make that change a reality:
1. Workflow Automation and Artificial Intelligence (AI) can offer 10x acceleration and the cost cutting we need to speed up environmental permitting.
While CEQ recognizes this in the report, there is a lot more that needs to be fleshed out. Fortunately, we’ve identified more than a dozen concrete ways AI could bolster permitting at each step of the process, and will be publishing more of these “tech plays” in the coming weeks (check out the first one!).
2. Grassroots technology can and should snowball.
The report also celebrates several small-scale, internally built applications such as the DOT's Pipeline Safety Hazardous Materials Webform and USDA's Rural Development’s Centralized Environmental Review Tracker. These quick to deploy, organic growth, minimal business rules grassroots solutions are a powerful starting point. They demonstrate how to address real pain points and user needs, however often they fall short when it comes to scaling adoption and use. As CEQ paves the way for the fundamental shift we need in how permitting is coordinated and completed, it’s vital that they provide effective frameworks, coordination, and creative pathways for innovative approaches to be tested and scaled. (We’ve also written extensively on the topic—read more here!)
3. Undergirding this work should be a skilled and coordinated workforce within federal agencies—one that can scope, vet, and implement innovative technology solutions.
This doesn’t mean that the government needs to build all permitting software in-house. Rather, they need sufficient technical expertise and product managers to become better buyers, partners, and consumers of the tech innovations that are necessary to support the country’s climate-smart and environmental stewardship goals. We applaud CEQ for both recognizing the necessity of in-house technical staff, and for staffing up with more than 5 technologists across their permitting and technology teams. Still, the long-term success of CEQ and individual agencies’ investment in technology is contingent upon the continued investment in a workforce that (1) has a technical and user-centered focus, (2) is coordinated and consistently learning across teams and projects, and (3) is empowered through agile development to adapt in order to meet the needs of tool users, agency staff, and permit applicants.
CEQ’s report is a timely, first-of-its kind survey of permitting technology. But we still have a long way to go to reduce permitting timelines and costs—and to make tools invaluable to the staff and project builders that should be using them at every stage of the permitting process. Fortunately, there are established and emerging technology opportunities that create obvious next steps in the deployment of better permitting tech. With the right people, policies, and processes in place, we can use those tools to make permitting more efficient and more valuable—to the government, project leaders, and our communities.
Interested in learning more about this work? Have feedback for us? We want to hear from you.
