Over the weekend, Boston Mayor Marty Walsh spoke at the ‘HubHacks’ conference to promote the need to update the City of Boston’s outdated permitting process. Marty Walsh’s team, including his chief information officer and head of Inspectional Services, have been searching for a way to simplify the permitting process, and have recently turned to the local tech community in an attempt to do so.
Andrew Arace, Director of Software Engineering and Development at Geonetics, attended the ‘hackathon’ to work on creating a better method to search for addresses in the city’s master database. Through his work at Geonetics, Andrew has been working closely with the city to improve the system, but wanted to attend the ‘hackathon’ to create something the city might have otherwise overlooked.
Mr. Arace, and a few other attendees, were featured in the Boston Herald’s article titled “Boston ‘permits’ hacks.” The intent of the ‘hackathon’ was to improve four areas of concern, including searching for addresses in the city’s database, obtaining permits for moving vans, finding necessary permits for specific jobs, and tracking the status of permits.
For more visit http://bostonherald.com/business/technology/2014/08/boston_permits_hacks