The lower price tag is easy to approve. It sails through procurement, clears the budget review, and looks like a responsible call. A permitting system that handles the basics for less. What's not to like?
The calculation starts unraveling quietly, usually after go-live, and usually not in ways that show up in any report.
That's what workarounds look like from the outside. What they cost on the inside is a different story.
If a plan examiner recognizes the platform is just "good enough," it's likely that other staff members do too. Someone has built a spreadsheet to fill gaps in the system. Someone else is downloading permit files into Bluebeam because it is the only way to complete a proper review. Others are sending follow-up emails manually because nothing triggers automatically.
When the system is "technically" working, people may say it is fine or feel it is not important enough to raise. Instead of pushing back, they adapt to keep things moving. Adaptation may feel like the right choice at the moment, because the work still needs to get done. But it comes with a hidden cost, one that never appeared on the invoice.
When a plans examiner spends time moving between systems instead of completing a review, or spends an afternoon manually rebuilding data because leadership needs a report the system cannot produce, or tracks re-inspections on a spreadsheet because the platform does not route them automatically, that time is taken away from the work meant to impact their community.
It's even clearer to see when you run the numbers.
Consider a conservative scenario: five staff members within the permitting department each spend an extra 20 minutes a day on workarounds. That adds up to 418 hours a year. Over a five-year contract, that is more than 2,000 hours spent compensating for software that mostly works.
The impact goes beyond hours. One verified government reviewer described it plainly: the platform "does not make it easy to reach a larger goal in improving efficiency — it keeps up on day-to-day tasks but doesn't facilitate process improvements." That's the ceiling a lot of agencies hit without realizing it.
The reality is that most agencies that chose "good enough" permitting software made a reasonable decision. Government procurement is designed to prioritize purchase price. During the RFP process, scoring criteria often favor the lowest bid, and evaluation tools reinforce that outcome.
What looks like an attractive price becomes a problem for the staff who actually use the tool, the ones who are going to spend the next five years using it, and inventing workarounds to get them through. Too often, they are not in the room when the decision is made.
This is what makes internal champions so critical when choosing a system. They understand how the work actually gets done and can surface questions that do not appear in an RFP. What happens when a workflow breaks down? How does reporting hold up under real demands? Where does automation stop and manual work begin?
Muskegon County's Road Commission was managing internal and external processes on paper, with no way to provide online services. Project delays were a known cost. So was the manual effort required to keep things moving.
After implementing an integrated operations platform with automated workflows, digital request forms, and a resident portal, the team could process and track work in one place without manual reconstruction. As Laurita Humphrey, the county's Director of Finance and HR, put it: "The efficiency and communication improve everything we do. Nothing gets lost in a game of telephone."
That outcome didn't start with a technology decision. It started with someone asking the right question before the contract was signed.
The cheapest line on a budget proposal is rarely the cheapest outcome. The agencies that get the most value from their permitting software are the ones that asked what it would cost to use it, not just what it would cost to buy it.
If you're evaluating permitting platforms or living with one that mostly works, GovPilot is worth a conversation.