Permit Journey at the City of Arden
The City of Arden processes about 6,200 building-permit applications a year across five departments. Applicants submit through a portal or on paper; 62% still use paper. The statutory decision deadline is 30 days, but average processing is 21 days for complete applications and 47 days when information is missing. 38% of applications are incomplete at first submission. The portal replicates the paper form, uses technical wording and has no status tracking. An accessibility review found the portal fails WCAG 2.1 AA at two steps. The city has €150,000 and six months for improvements. The IT director wants to rebuild the portal; the planning director wants more enforcement on applicants; customer service wants a caseworker hotline. You are asked to lead a customer-journey review.
1. Where is the greatest journey failure: the portal, applicant behaviour or backstage processing? Justify your answer.
Read the worked answer
The greatest failure is the end-to-end journey, with backstage and front-stage causes. 38% incomplete at first submission points to unclear requirements and form design, not simply applicant behaviour. The 47-day cycle for incomplete applications suggests rework and handoffs after submission. 62% paper use plus WCAG failures at two steps show the digital channel excludes people, while a portal that copies the paper form digitizes a bad process. Use a journey map and service blueprint to separate front-stage information problems, backstage triage and handoff delays, and policy constraints. Only then decide whether to rebuild, redesign guidance or change processing. Blaming applicants or IT alone would miss the cross-department causes.
2. How would you allocate the €150,000 and six months?
Read the worked answer
Do not spend the €150,000 on a full rebuild. Allocate first to high-impact, low-regret fixes: plain-language requirements and a pre-submission completeness check; status tracking with realistic dates; assisted-digital support for paper and accessibility users; and WCAG fixes at the two failing steps. Reserve some budget for backstage triage so incomplete applications route to a missing-information queue with clear ownership. Run in six-month phases: baseline, pilot in one permit type, then scale. Measure incomplete rate, cycle time for complete and incomplete applications, digital uptake, accessibility conformance and customer effort. A rebuild can follow once the process is simplified; rebuilding the current process would lock in the failure.
3. What governance and metrics would keep five departments focused on the end-to-end journey?
Read the worked answer
Appoint a journey owner with a mandate across the five departments and run a monthly cross-department operating group using the service blueprint. Use shared end-to-end KPIs: first-submission completeness, end-to-end cycle time, percentage of applications with accurate status, digital and assisted uptake, WCAG conformance, customer effort and rework rate. Add departmental diagnostics for handoff delay, but do not let each department optimize its own step at the expense of the journey. Publish performance, escalate systemic blockers, and review the blueprint after each pilot. This governance is what prevents the IT director, planning director and customer service from pursuing three unrelated fixes.