Bainbridge Island stands alone as the only area in the county not committed to using the new computerized permitting and licensing system developed for Kitsap County by Poulsbo’s Paladin Data Systems spin-off company InterLocking Software.

The system has been in use by the county for over a year. The City of Bremerton became fully operational in July, with Poulsbo coming on-line this month. The City of Port Orchard should also be on-line with the system shortly.

Computers at Kitsap County’s data center provide the service to the cities for only a minimal equipment procurement and maintenance fee.

“The flexibility to have multiple jurisdictions use the same data system in differing ways simultaneously is a very unique feature.” said system architect Brian Borchers. Though sharing a common system with the county, each city has its own independent financial information, permitting rules, process workflow, and web portals.

Robert Johnston, InterLocking Software’s Chief Operating Officer reported at a recent meeting of the Port Orchard City Council that “Since switching from their manual system to the fully computerized system the County has seen a huge drop in the amount of time required to find, update and process permits. The amount of time required to process a county permit for a single-family home has been cut nearly in half, from 49 days to 26 days. In addition, the time it takes to do an inspection on a permit-related matter has dropped by half as well.”

Johnston noted that the system can also do things that would be impossible on paper, such as pull up a map of the parcel in question, then peel back layers of land-use designations to view the property’s relation to neighboring parcels and critical areas. The maps can show streets, neighboring parcel numbers and owners, terrain changes and slope, wetlands, streams and other potential areas of concern.

Tom Hickey, InterLocking’s VP of Sales said, “A number of other cities and counties in the Pacific Northwest are watching the success of the system in Kitsap County. We will soon be deploying the system at the city of University Place, and have a number of cities and counties, primarily in Washington and Idaho, looking at how much money they can save by implementing this more efficient, multi-jurisdictional software.”

In a unique public-private partnership, the county’s agreement with InterLocking Software calls for a royalty to be paid to the county for each system the company sells to other jurisdictions.