AMO Partners with Electronic Permitting System Provider Cloudpermit
Toronto, Ontario – The Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) is partnering with Cloudpermit to offer municipalities a digital platform to manage building permits more efficiently and effectively.
Managing building permits electronically increases efficiency, streamlines approvals, and ensures that municipalities capture new assessments in a timely manner. An end-to-end digitized permitting process also improves customer service and reduces the cost-of-service delivery for the municipality. The Cloudpermit platform is secure, scalable and cloud-based.
“AMO worked with other key partners in the building and municipal sector to select a solution that could be scaled to meet the needs of any municipality,” said AMO President Jamie McGarvey. “This leadership could not be more timely. More efficient and seamless processes are a top priority as we seek to address the shortage in housing supply.”
AMO selected Cloudpermit through a competitive bidding process. For the search, AMO was supported by an evaluation committee that included representatives from the Ontario Building Officials’ Association (OBOA), the Municipal Information Systems Association of Ontario (MISA ON), the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation (MPAC) as well as AMO and Local Authority Services (LAS) staff.
“We are thrilled to partner with AMO and work with MPAC to offer Ontario municipalities of any size an efficient, user-friendly, and simple building permit process,” explained Jarkko Turtiainen, Cloudpermit’s Senior Vice President, North America. “This partnership will greatly benefit municipalities with faster permit issuance, on-site mobile inspections, and an easy implementation process, as well as encourage standardization for improved efficiency across the province.”
The partnership with AMO means that Ontario municipalities now have the choice of an approved vendor with an e-permitting platform specifically made for Ontario. Municipalities have the flexibility of implementing an e-permitting system that can be customized to local needs that includes unlimited user licenses, the option of migrating existing permit data to the new system, annual hosting, as well as ongoing training and customer support.
Ontario is growing and MPAC processes 300,000 building permits annually. MPAC’s role in the building permitting process is critical for municipalities, updating assessments so that municipalities can accurately recover property taxes. That’s why AMO and MPAC announced a partnership last year to search for an integrated e-permitting system that provides a one-stop shop for building permits that includes permit applications and review, communications with applicants, payment processing, data storage and coordination with MPAC. The Cloudpermit solution met and exceeded these critical requirements in the search for an e-permitting vendor, particularly with its scalability to municipalities of all sizes in Ontario.
“On behalf of MPAC we extend our congratulations to Cloudpermit on their successful bid and we look forward to assisting interested municipalities in their building permit modernization journey,” said Al Spacek, MPAC’s Board Chair. “This project will increase MPAC’s ability to deliver on timely new assessment to Ontario municipalities and assist our partners in realizing new revenues sooner.”
AMO/LAS, MPAC, and Cloudpermit are developing a pilot program that will integrate municipal permit reporting processes into MPAC systems for a true end-to-end digitized permitting process. A formal Expression of Interest (EOI) to participate in the pilot will be distributed to Ontario municipalities for consideration in the coming days.
Since the 2017 release of #OnMuni Online: Towards Digital Transformation and Opportunities for Ontario’s Municipal Governments, AMO has been partnering with leading solution providers to offer scalable, affordable, and easy-to-use technologies to help members find ways to be more efficient and reduce costs.
About AMO
AMO is a non-profit organization representing almost all of Ontario’s 444 municipal governments. AMO supports strong and effective municipal government in Ontario and promotes the value of municipal government as a vital and essential component of Ontario and Canada’s political system.
About MPAC
The Municipal Property Assessment Corporation (MPAC) is an independent, not-for-profit corporation funded by all Ontario municipalities, accountable to the Province, municipalities and property taxpayers through its 13-member Board of Directors. Its role is to assess and classify all properties in Ontario in compliance with the Assessment Act and regulations set by the Government of Ontario. MPAC assesses more than 5.4 million properties in Ontario, representing more than $3 trillion in property value. These assessments provide the foundation that municipalities use to base the property taxes needed to pay for community services.
About Cloudpermit
Cloudpermit is an online software solution for community development. As a simple and smart software solution, Cloudpermit empowers local governments, development communities, and the public with online land management processes for building permitting and planning. For additional information, please visit cloudpermit.com.
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For more information:
AMO/LAS: las@las.on.ca or (416) 971-9856
MPAC: Mary Dawson-Cole, Regional Manager, Municipal and Stakeholder Relations Valuation and Customer Relations, mary.dawson-cole@mpac.ca, (705) 419-0935.
Cloudpermit: Jarkko Turtiainen, Senior Vice President North America, jarkko.turtiainen@cloudpermit.com, (647) 248-7761.