Web emmy nominee and this includes second phase features so these are in the works. Were looking at using software as a platform for forms that are submittable. Were using individual users and check lists and data storage and delivery and prefill are some of the other capabilities. Portal maintenance is important. We want to make sure its not another government website left alone and unattended and a year from now or two its obsolete so we update the content when legislation changes or important due dates to remind owners about fees that are due. We constantly create new content, new starter kits and adding information about the Business Registration going online and information about gross receipt taxes et cetera and we audit and fix links on the site and security updates and training manual of what we do to update the portal and i have been saying that technology shouldnt be the only thing that drives change. We also need to look at the process itself which is why in the last six mon
Other departments here but i want to know which departments how many of the city departments are having this as a measurement . Because i think its important to gauge from a Customer Experience standpoint how much time it takes for people to go through the process . In the report it says on average someone i think went through a process and took four months but we see cases someone went through and waited two years to do a full build out. Yeah, we didnt find that i recall and my team can speak to this maybe any departments that could readily produce that information. There were some places where you could discern part of it by digging deep through the data but it wasnt a top line item for any of the departments that we spoke with. Okay. And second question is based on one of the recommendations as well is to link the low awareness permits and have them packaged together with the critical to open permits so applicants can apply for them simultaneously. There was an example pointed out a
Make it simpler . So we went through the process of opening a restaurant, find all of the permit processes relevant for a new owner so we mapped 22 restaurant processes across San Francisco departments and three state and federal departments. To supplement the work we interviewed local Business Owners, Different Department staff and talked to the Acceleration Team in new york city. We looked at permitting data from the treasurer and Tax Collector and a survey from Business Owners to ask them about the obstacles in the process. This is a look at the Different Departments that we worked with and mapped and the different areas so for each department we produced a map of that permitting process so this is a sample of one of those here and we really had a specific focus on what does this look like from the customers perspective and what are the steps in the process for the customer and the back end processes that support that . So in this process you see the top row is always the customer a
The road when opening a business when they sunk time and money into that and probably despite the best efforts of departments people will come into the process from a lot of angles and are the ways to route people toward the Planning Department early on no matter where they come in the process . Okay. And then i dont know if planning wants to chime in. Sure. Im the assistant director of planning. As ryan mentioned were not always in control of when people reach out to us but when they do reach out to us we have dedicated staff that staff the public counter as well as other planners that cycle through and all of the planners when we encounter folks thinking of opening a business and we tell them dont put money down on a lease or things of that nature until were confident it can be permitted and try to walk them through the variables and oftentimes we get folks interested in opening a restaurant in a neighborhood but not have addresses in mind and in a neighborhood there could be differe
Theres a lot of work to be done and more than just getting your certificate of occupancy or temporary one to operate so within our department a more holistic look at the process discussion between the interdivisional agencies, towards inspection and any subsequent revisions during the course of construction that are needed to be approved in a timely manner we will continue to look at that and engage our own staff and we started that recently and bring in staff and expand it with more staff and both in the inspection and the plan approval side so we can focus on this and make it better more efficient, and usable customer friendly process. All right. Thank you. I think thats a great segue to something that im going to make a request of from some of the departments here. I realize we cant solve all of the problems in this hearing and there is much more work to be done, so one of the things i would like to ask of all of the departments and planning dbi, fire, Tax Assessors Office and work