Electronic fillable permit applications/forms

[Mango]

I am currently converting all of our forms and permit applications to an electronic fillable application. This way, all of our customers who have computer access can fill out the forms from their desktop. the fields can be pre populated and saved so that certain fields like name, address, etc. on the form or application do not have to be re-filled every time the applicant pulls a permit. The form can be emailed to us for processing rather than printed or faxed.

QUESTION:

Does anyone have experience in processing electronic forms? We intend to set up a generic email inbox that all of the permit technicians will have access to. We want to avoid contractors emailing directly to a permit technician for obvious reasons. The issue that I see arising is an over-achiever will tend to process the majority of the workload if it is not evenly distributed. Fortunately for me I have more than one over-achiever but I would still like a mechanism that would ensure an even distribution. Rather than reinventing the workflow wheel I want to get feedback from the people like you that have already dealt with these types of issues. I understand that there is software that will generate a "work ticket" similar to what "technical support" departments have but I do not want to purchase additional software if there is a better solution. I also do not want the Senior Permit Technician to have to manually distribute if it can be done another way. Any thoughts?

Thank you,

Mango

 

[Heaven]

Re: Electronic fillable permit applications/forms

I have been interested in seeing if any juristictions whould respond to your post as I wanted to ask them what their experience has been with electronic forms. My fear is that I'd hear "I submitted my application 2 weeks ago!" (not that they don't say that with paper forms) but someone is bound to "start the clock" when they hit the "enter" button. Of course, I assume that the filling out of the form does not mean that it may be submitted electronically, nessesarity. How does the check come, seperatly? I wonder what the pitfalls of this might be ~

 

[peach]

Re: Electronic fillable permit applications/forms

I'd probably send them to a mid-level manager to distribute the work.

You need some kind of "gate keeper"..

A little human intervention is better than spending a bundle on an automatic IT solution.

The clock probably DOES start when the client hits send...

The gate keeper should check every 20 or 30 minutes and distribute the work to the next available "over achiever"..

They don't need to pounce on every response the second it comes in. You may be able to set up a message that says something like "your request has been forwarded to Alice Glass, 228-777-1111, you will have a response within "x" hours"..

forgive me Alice.. I know that's not really your phone number..

 

[Heaven]

Re: Electronic fillable permit applications/forms

I rarely get a submittal that is complete including all the nessesary documents

(I even have a detailed instruction page). I can only dream about having neat, correct, complete applications submitted electronically.

Maybe someday : )

 

[Inspector 102]

Re: Electronic fillable permit applications/forms

In my little neck of the woods, we created our own "in house" electronic forms for permit issuance. Access Database gets all the information based on address and automatically inserts lot info, owner info, etc. We don't even have our GIS on the Web yet, so electronic filing is a couple years away. Something about budget dollars keeps holding us back. Maybe I can learn some valuable information from the experts on this BB.