City of Burlington overhauls development process, putting people first to strengthen government functions

Overview

The city of Burlington, located on the west end of Lake Ontario, an hour west of Toronto, is home to nearly 200,000 residents. A blend of bustling city and relaxed, natural landscape, Burlington has a diverse, growing economy across various sectors, including manufacturing and technology.

To meet the needs of their growing population, the City of Burlington partnered with MNP – having already put plans in motion independently and with other external vendors – to expand their residential building application process to increase transparency for citizens and developers. Ultimately, their engagement transformed the way the City tackles projects throughout the municipality.

The challenge

A desire to expedite the building permit process and increase transparency for applicants was the catalyst for change at the City of Burlington. Though their development application process was functional, customers were unable to track their progress real-time, often leading to frequent calls and emails to staff requesting updates.

Customers had limited visibility into where their application stood resulting in delays in scheduling and ordering materials, as well as redundant communication loops between developers and consultants. Their existing system wasn’t designed to expose real-time status updates externally, creating confusion and inefficiency.

Their journey to modernize IT practices and improve collaboration with customers and contractors was supported, in part, from provincial funding opportunities meant to help accelerate housing development across Ontario.

“As part of tackling this challenge, we redesigned our entire process to focus on the people involved…Then we looked to what technologies we could use to support that and enable its ongoing success.”

Chad MacDonald, Chief Information Officer, City of Burlington

The approach

With the help of the provincial grant, the Streamline Development Approval Fund, the City had access to resources to help them find a tailored solution to their challenges. They were interested in taking their existing Agile model approach – which focusses on people over process, customer collaboration, and being responsive to change – to the next level, changing the mindset of the team and how they worked together.

Working closely with MNP Digital’s team, the City expanded on existing tools to display relevant information related to progress in the building application process. They built a system called MyFiles, a low-code Microsoft Power Platform program for building application visibility.

The City’s existing permitting infrastructure was the gateway. With their legacy system, both the City and MNP’s teams were able to add complex integrations with relative ease, and without needing to start from scratch. This was the first solution built in their own Power Platform environment to help speed up request replies. With this approach, the City was able to dissect different business processes to see what was working and what could use improvement to build a solution.

By embracing the citizen-centric Agile mindset, the City employed sprints where they broke down work into shorter cycles to make progress, develop action plans, and test their work. Connecting teams within the organization was key to the review process which enabled them to adjust their next steps based on feedback to improve further iterations.  

Using the Microsoft Power Platform and Azure architecture they already had in their arsenal, the City was able to build for scalability and ensure security at the same time.

Their approach to determining the best route to accomplish their goals was centred on involving City staff and bringing citizens’ voices together to dissect and reform the process. They conducted sprints to brainstorm multiple times throughout the initial building phase and with MNP’s help, hosted workshops focussed on engagement, not just the technology they’d be using to get the job done.

By moving from an in-house development to low-code/no-code solutions they were able to keep their approach simple yet effective and empower business owners and developers to manage the platform with ease.

Building internal capacity for future scalability was key to their goals and helped create a mindset shift among staff.

“When we started this conversation with MNP we knew we wanted this experience to be collaborative, and it delivered… You’ve taught us how to fish and now we’re fishing.”

Ryan Parker, Director of digital platforms, architecture, and cyber security, City of Burlington

The solution

Since they’ve started using their MyFiles system to help applicants track their status in real-time, the permit process has shortened and citizen experience and satisfaction has greatly improved. Prior to the City’s continuous improvement initiatives, applications in the pre-building permit process took an average of 17 weeks from initial receipt of the application until a building permit application could be made.

Now, complete applications average 5.5 weeks to be able to apply for a building permit with 30 percent of applications taking two weeks or less.

Almost immediately after launching the new portal, staff workload was greatly reduced – with MyFiles handling inquiries directly – and the portal displays real-time status of the applicaiton review cycles to further process transparency.

Opportunities for meaningful customer engagement have grown and City employees, across departments, work more closely to help streamline process and procedure thanks to the shift in project development culture throughout the portal’s implementation. The overall organization mindset shift was a key goal for the City at the start of their engagement and the outcome has gone well beyond their initial expectations of what kind of collaboration – both within the municipality, and for stakeholders – was possible.

The new platform has improved applicant satisfaction and planning accuracy and enhanced internal understanding of process bottleneck, building new pathways for project development throughout the municipality. Additionally, valuable takeaways from this project are already being applied to other city projects.

As well as building platform infrastructure that improved user experiences, the City started a cultural transformation within the organization. From how they work with vendors to how they approach IT projects, internal and external collaboration will now be the foundation for all future projects.

“We truly worked on this together… We wanted to learn and that’s exactly what happened. Those teachings and that collaboration helped form the great relationship with have with MNP today.”  

Chad MacDonald, Chief Information Officer, City of Burlington

How we helped

MNP Digital services provided

• Created MyFiles solution to integrate developers and the business side of operations into the process.
• Conducted two, three-day workshops – one with executive management to change organizational mindset at the highest level and another with the project team and citizen stakeholders on customer-centric design and ideation.
• Designed, planned, created, and deployed the MyFiles solution, initially leading deployment then transitioning to a supportive role as the City’s team took over.
• Collaborated closely with the City’s team to ensure a hands-on, integrated approach to developing a unique solution to fit their needs now and into the future.