With a population of nearly 38,000, Atlantic City receives at least 120 zoning permit requests per month. For years the city relied on paper forms to accept and process permit applications which often took days or weeks to process a single application. Paper applications had to be mailed in, and would often be submitted incomplete or illegibly, causing headaches for city staff, and further delaying the process. Payments were also submitted by mail resulting in delayed or lost payments to the city.
The paper-based process also meant that inter-departmental data was not easily accessible, requiring zoning department staff to call, email, or walk to other departments that had necessary information. Additionally the status of applications was not readily available, and providing updates to applicants was extremely difficult.
A key recommendation of the State of New Jersey’s 2018 transition report for returning Atlantic City to self-governance, was for the city to invest in software to manage and share data about services and analyze results. The Atlantic City Implementation plan drafted by the state’s Department of Community Affairs, detailed that, “such software should result in faster delivery of services provided to residents, greater transparency, faster data sharing between city departments and the public, and greater confidence in city government by residents and the broader community.”
