Page 318 - Using MIS

286 Chapter 7 Processes, Organizations, and Information Systems

Receive Permit Application Reject Permit

No
Complete?

Yes

Engineering Review

No
Approved?

Yes
No
Need
Septic or Yes
Water Review? Approved?
Health Department Review
No
Yes

Need
Highway Yes Approved?
Dept. Review? No
Highway Department Review
No Yes
Figure 7-21
Building Permit Process,
Old Version Approve Permit

sequential nature. Only after a permit had been approved or office made three copies of the permit and distributed one to
rejected by the engineering review process would they find out each department. The departments reviewed the permits in
that a health or highway review was also needed. Because each parallel; a clerk would analyze the results and, if there were no
of these reviews could take 3 or 4 weeks, applicants request- rejections, approve the permit.
ing permits wanted the review processes to be concurrent Unfortunately, this process had a number of problems, too.
rather than serial. Also, both the permit applicants and county For one, some of the permit applications were lengthy; some in-
personnel were frustrated because they never knew where a cluded as many as 40 to 50 pages of large architectural drawings.
particular application was in the permit process. A contractor The labor and copy expense to the county was considerable.
would call to ask how much longer, and it might take an hour Second, in some cases departments reviewed documents un-
or longer just to find which desk the permits were on. necessarily. If, for example, the highway department rejected an
Accordingly, the county changed the permit process to application, then neither the engineering nor health departments
that shown in Figure 7-22. In this second process, the permit needed to continue their reviews. At first, the county responded