Key Takeaways: CEQ’s First-Ever Environmental Permitting Technology & Data Summit
This week, we had the exciting opportunity to participate in the White House Council on Environmental Quality’s (CEQ) inaugural Environmental Permitting Technology and Data Summit. The event brought together a diverse group of federal agency staff and non-governmental stakeholders to talk about ideas for better federal permitting—and to show off some of the tech that’s already making “better” a reality on the ground.
Permitting is top of mind for many stakeholders and federal agencies because the country won’t be able to spend major federal climate, green infrastructure, and gray infrastructure funds if we can’t get projects approved—and because of CEQ’s recently proposed revisions to the National Environmental Policy Act’s (NEPA) implementing regulations.
The summit opened with a keynote on opportunities for smarter environmental permitting by Jennifer Pahlka—whose book, Recoding America, has been a constant reference point for our team’s thinking about all the ways technology and changes to arcane procedures can make government dramatically more efficient. It was thought-provoking to hear Jen connect the dots between the theory of change laid out in her book—around better technology and policy implementation—and the permitting problems CEQ and summit attendees (ourselves included!) have been hard at work on.
Other speakers and panelists alike underscored that federal permitting sits at the nexus of a growing national momentum and access to major resources. And the reasons for that urgency are clear: stakeholders in and outside of government cannot responsibly site, build, or deploy critical infrastructure—or protect communities and fragile ecosystems—without a robust, efficient permitting process; and effective use of data and technology across agencies is key to improving the process. We’re encouraged that the summit was largely outcomes-focused, and tied to concrete areas in which stakeholders of all stripes want to see improved coordination.
We’ve summarized these key takeaways:
The technology we need to improve permitting is already here—check out these “bright spots” happening at the state, federal, and international levels (go Denmark!).
It’s not just about new technology to support permitting; policy, operations, and delivery efforts need to be coordinated. That means better policy design upstream around technology and data requirements, procurement, and delivery—as well as integrated teams that deliberately coordinate and communicate when it comes to user research, building, testing, and deploying new tech.
User research is not the same as the public comment process. While public input and engagement around permitting is important, user research has been entirely missing from the picture. User research in service of improved permitting tech and data is about discovering how users actually participate in, and interact with, the permitting process and tools—and then using those insights to make the process and tools better for those users. This also means learning what the most effective ways to collate public input are before, during, and after a project.
Better data and tech matters—but improved coordination between agencies, users, and processes is more important than discrete development efforts. It’s key that efforts around permitting-related tech and data innovation don’t only focus on making the process easier for a single federal agency or staff user. Improvements also need to be conceived and executed across agency silos—and in an integrated way—such that the entire network of state, federal, and local agency staff and project proponents have access to the information they need when they need it. Failure to improve coordination on this score won’t just hamper innovation around permitting; it will also drive up IT costs across environmental agencies unnecessarily.
We’d be remiss without underscoring one more takeaway: making permitting-related tech and data more accessible and interoperable for users—especially between agencies—can generate an outsized return on investment.
We were surprised to learn, for instance, that the Fish and Wildlife Service’s (FWS) iPAC tool—by focusing on user needs and improved accessibility—saved millions of dollars and drastically reduced timelines and complexity around its environmental review program. We heard some pretty astounding stats on the outcomes, including that a process that once took 30 days to complete now takes users 30 minutes—and that in 2023 alone iPAC helped save nearly 70,000 man hours and 3 million dollars.
The point is that much of what federal permitting deals with involves cross-agency processes and what should be shared, interoperable data—information that can help users across organizations effectively coordinate their efforts, share what works and what doesn’t, and tangibly improve the speed and quality of environmental permits and reviews.
If those sound like goals you’re working to make real, we want to hear from you! And if you’re interested in collaborating around these efforts moving forward, or have questions about EPIC’s permitting-related work, get in touch.
