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Articles May 30, 2025

Building Trust and Economic Growth Through Transparency

Gilmarie Acevedo
Author
Gilmarie Acevedo

What if transparency in government could unlock new levels of efficiency and economic prosperity? States across the country find themselves in a fierce competition to attract new businesses and stimulate economic development. Amidst this competitive landscape, the ability to promise — and deliver — efficient and expedited permitting, licensing, and certification processes has become a top priority for states looking to stand out.

Citizens have put increasing pressure on government agencies to provide seamless interactions and improved visibility into the processes that impact their daily lives and business operations. As citizens become more informed and engaged, they expect real-time access to information and the ability to track the status of their requests. Meeting these expectations is essential for building a responsive and trustworthy government. When government processes are transparent, agencies can identify bottlenecks, streamline workflows, and implement improvements quickly and effectively. Having these processes in place promotes economic growth by enabling businesses to operate more efficiently and attract top-quality businesses and opportunities.

Leveraging technology to achieve greater transparency in government can optimize results, leading to:

  • Streamlined cross-agency application workflows 
  • The ability to assess current systems and define clear strategies
  • The opportunity to implement user-friendly platforms that allow agencies to better serve their constituents through transparent operations


This approach can reduce administrative burdens, accelerate processing times, and increase citizen engagement — resulting in responsive, efficient government processes.

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Why Process Efficiency and Transparency Are Important for Government

Efficiency is crucial when it comes to keeping daily operations running smoothly. For example, user-friendly, streamlined application processes can significantly reduce the time and resources needed to manage and process permits, licenses, and certifications. This allows agencies to concentrate on other essential tasks and results in quicker approvals, benefitting citizens and increasing customer trust.

Creating greater transparency also gives citizens more confidence in their government systems. Allowing users to easily track the status of their applications and understand each step involved improves engagement, creates faster approvals, and promotes economic growth by enabling businesses to operate more effectively. Some specific benefits of efficiency and transparency include:

1) Improved Public Trust

Transparency in government processes fosters openness and ensures that citizens have access to accurate and timely information. This helps build confidence in the government’s ability to manage applications fairly and efficiently.

Example: At a recent project led by CapTech, a state agency was able to show that it was meeting its internal target processing time on 95% of all applications — improving public perception and building trust.

2) Enhanced Accountability

Transparency holds government agencies accountable for their actions and decisions, leading to better decision-making and more responsible governance.

Example: Some states revealed that 75% of applications missing their overall target decision date were delayed due to external agencies or applicants, even though the state agency met its own target days. Providing transparency regarding the responsible parties for each step improved accountability among agents and external parties involved in the process.

3) Economic Growth

Efficient and transparent processes improve business operations and attract new economic development opportunities. Faster permit, license, and certification approvals mean that projects can move forward without unnecessary delays, boosting economic activity.

Example: A Virginia agency reduced its average permit processing time by 85%, leading to an estimated annual economic benefit of $179 million to the state’s economy.

4) Cost Savings

Streamlined processes reduce the time and resources required to manage permits, leading to cost savings for both government agencies and citizens.

Example: Another Virginia agency estimated that its transparent platform reduced processing time and saved taxpayers up to $40 million per year within two years of implementation.

5) Increased Citizen Engagement

Transparent processes encourage citizen engagement by making it easier for people to interact with government agencies and access information.

Example: A major utility provider had to search for applications and statuses from three different agencies sites and tools. CapTech centralized these applications and searches into one common tool that gave users a consistent experience and reporting model.

6) Better Resource Allocation

Streamlined permit processing allows government agencies to allocate resources more effectively, focusing on other critical tasks and improving overall productivity.

7) Continuous Improvement

Transparency helps identify bottlenecks and areas for improvement, enabling continuous optimization of processes and better service delivery.

Overcoming Barriers to Transparency

Government agencies often face several common challenges when dealing with permits and applications. Some of the most common barriers include:

Complexity of Processes

Government agencies often struggle with the complex application processes for permits, licenses, and registrations. This includes navigating multiple processes and approval systems, which can be time-consuming and difficult to manage. This also includes various conditional paths and repeated steps based on qualifying regulations on external party reviews, joint permit applications, public comment remediations, site visits, and so on.

Limited Personnel

The lack of sufficient personnel with the expertise to handle the high volume of applications can slow down the process and increase costs. For example, Virginia issues more than 400k permits, licenses, certifications, and other forms of agency approvals — which include over 600 types of approvals.

Coordination Between Agencies & Jurisdictions

Effective coordination between agencies and jurisdictions including federal, state, local, and tribal lands is crucial but often challenging. This includes sharing permit application data and fostering collaboration to improve efficiency.

Technical Completeness & Compliance

Ensuring that applications are technically complete and compliant with various regulations is a significant challenge. This time-consuming process involves several manual reviews to ensure all revisions are captured before securing approvals from multiple stakeholders.

Incomplete Information

Applications often lack complete information, leading to delays and additional reviews.

Data Management & Access

Managing real-time data for permits and applications is crucial for compliance and efficiency but can be difficult to implement. Third-party tools can be hard to configure and may restrict access to data for custom reports or transparency.

Disparate Application Management Tools

Multiple application management technologies may be implemented across the state and even within one agency, each tracking statuses and steps in different data elements and patterns. Many applications may not be in a system at all, relying on paper or email applications and internal spreadsheets for tracking progress and status.

Siloed Technology Ownership

Agencies commonly adopt different “fit for purpose” technologies for different aspects of the lifecycle including e-permitting, billing, process management, and federal reporting. These create data silos and difficulty creating a single view of resources, steps within a single process, and opportunities for efficiency. This may also create an inconsistent citizen experience in the interactions and process with the agency.

These challenges highlight the need for streamlined processes, effective coordination, and the use of digital solutions to improve application management and application efficiency.

How to Successfully Build Application Transparency

Building application transparency involves several key steps, including assessing the current state, defining a clear vision and strategy, creating a roadmap, and implementing the solution.

1) Current State Assessment: The first step is to conduct a thorough assessment of the existing processes and systems. This involves understanding the workflows, identifying pain points, and gathering feedback from stakeholders.

2) Vision and Strategy: Based on the assessment, a clear vision and strategy are defined. This includes setting goals for transparency, efficiency, and user experience — ultimately creating a centralized platform that streamlines permit applications and provides real-time tracking for citizens. Outputs that are critical to a successful solution include:

  • Standardized Functional Architectures: Map complex and diverse processes into a common format and identify repeatable terminology and phases. Select the right level of granularity for storytelling and data capture to ensure clarity and consistency across stakeholder communications, enabling scalable solutions and efficient process management.
  • Common Data Model: Identify common elements in applications and processes to model data in a way that allows for shared terminology and target timeline definition and mapping but also allows for flexibility in behavior and reporting. This enables an extensible solution because processes and source system data can be easily mapped to this shared data model and isn’t tightly coupled to one agency, technology, or subject area.
  • Flexible Integration Options: Design a solution that meets each agency or program at its level of maturity for integration and data capture. In CapTech’s prior experience, the scope of source systems included mature third-party tools and SaaS products, custom home-grown applications, simple spreadsheet trackers, and fully manual processes without a system of record. The solution was to design two simple integration patterns to meet each program at its preferred method of integration.
  • Audience-Specific Consumption: Creating personas and audiences allows for a tailored consumption layer. For example, a single solution can provide a centralized transparency platform for a utility provider with applications across multiple agencies, a permit manager checking the open applications against approaching deadlines in an application or workflow tool, and an agency executive monitoring the reduction in processing time month-over-month.


3) Roadmap: A detailed roadmap outlines the steps needed to achieve the vision. This includes defining milestones, allocating resources, and setting timelines. An actionable roadmap should involve phases such as requirements gathering, design, development, testing, and deployment. The roadmap should minimize time to initial value by balancing quick win initiatives along the overall path to value and full implementation.

4) Implementation: The implementation step involves developing the platform, integrating it with existing systems, and ensuring it meets the needs of all stakeholders. From the initial implementation, additional groups and agencies can be onboarded iteratively in phases. These subsequent phases each also add new features of reporting, performance calculations, workflow administration tools, and more. This focus on reducing time to value and quick implementations brings immediate value to the state and increases long-term buy-in on the initiatives.

A Path to Enhanced Transparency

Successful digital transformation goes beyond just technology — it’s about creating meaningful change that directly impacts citizens and government operations. Agencies can achieve significant improvements by assessing current processes to identify inefficiencies, defining a clear vision and roadmap for modernization, and implementing integrated solutions that enhance transparency and efficiency.

Engaging all stakeholders in the process ensures that solutions meet the unique needs of each agency. By adopting a collaborative, technology-driven approach, governments can create scalable solutions that improve transparency and service delivery while providing citizen-centric experiences that adapt to evolving community needs.

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Gilmarie Acevedo

Director

Envelope