A multimillion-dollar overhaul of Honolulu’s building permit software in early August was a disaster for staff who reported in the weeks after it launched that the dysfunctional system was making their jobs harder, slowing down already glacial permit reviews and raising concerns about the safety of newly permitted construction.
In an anonymous survey of more than 150 employees — half the staff — respondents delivered almost universally negative feedback with many suggesting the entire transition to the new system was a mistake.
The city replaced a longstanding custom program with an off-the-shelf solution from Salesforce that was immediately met with an avalanche of complaints, leaving the city’s software contractors scrambling to establish workarounds and fix bugs. While the permitting department says some complaints have been addressed and the overall tech transition was necessary, multiple employees said in the survey that the new program is fundamentally ill-suited for the city’s regulatory needs.
Tasks that used to take minutes suddenly took hours, they said. Data that was accessible before became impossible to find. And information could be changed without a log showing who edited what. One engineer went so far as to say they would refuse to enter a building that was reviewed under the new system because they can’t trust it is safe…