Snohomish County is Washington’s third-most populous county and the birthplace of Boeing 747 and 787 aircrafts. While part of the greater Seattle-Tacoma metro area, the county remains economically and geographically diverse. Areas near the county’s southern border with King County are home to both high-tech companies and their workers, as well as typical service industries. Meanwhile, agriculture powers local economies in the northern and western parts of the county, and there are more people employed in manufacturing than in any other county in the state.
These factors have led to significant growth in the county’s population and development in recent decades. To manage land use approvals, building permits, and inspection operations, the county is using the govService Amanda enterprise platform.
The county needed a robust platform to keep services efficient
Snohomish County’s Planning and Development Services Department is processing 9,000 to 10,000 permits annually.
Managing that workload and keeping services efficient for residents and developers requires the power and flexibility of an enterprise platform.
Amanda’s flexibility and enterprise power allows multiple departments to better manage resident-facing functions
Other county departments, such as the Assessor’s Office and Public Works, are able to access data easily through Amanda.
This allows all departments to better manage resident-facing functions. For example, county assessors can access building plans to help make tax value decisions while eliminating the need for paper copies.
The Planning and Development Services Department improved response times to residents’ questions by creating the “Ask a Permit Tech” form in Amanda.
The team uses Amanda to manage incoming questions as a workflow, allowing each question to be assigned to an employee with the requisite knowledge to answer. The questions and responses are maintained in Amanda, serving as a reference for future questions on the same topic.
The county uses Amanda’s powerful analytics tool to determine the efficacy of – and further improve – the online permit process.
Dashboards allow county employees to see permit and inspection volumes, performance metrics, processing times, and outcomes using the Yellowfin Analytics built into Amanda.
Additional features and flexibility further improve processes
In 2020, the county upgraded to the latest version of the platform, Amanda 7. Since the upgrade, the team has called Amanda 7 very flexible, noting that the additional features have enabled them to improve their permit processing. Furthermore, the Amanda 7 interface remains easy to use, allowing staff to search for permits, build reports, and retrieve historical information quickly and efficiently.
