Barrington wins award for electronic permitting transition during COVID-19

The village of Barrington received a service improvement award from the metro Chicago chapter of the American Public Works Association for its successful transition from paper to electronic permits in 2020.

The village's development services department had to transition to telework during the COVID-19 pandemic starting in March 2020, and a team including staff members Jennifer Tennant, Susan Elder, Andrew Binder, and Heather Lis worked on how to keep doing permit processing remotely. The transition was completed at no cost to the village.

"While there are a number of software and website solutions for electronic permit submittal, review and issuance, the village's budgetary and implementation timeline constraints required a more creative, internal solution, which was achieved using the village's new cloud-based Google suite tools," village officials said in a news release.

Director of Development Services Marie Hansen said staff members have created a more efficient and convenient permitting system.

"The thoughtful creation of procedures and tracking mechanisms required zero investment on behalf of the village and have created significant cost and time savings for years to come, while also increasing the village's level of service. We are so proud of these achievements and honored to have been given the APWA service improvement award," Hansen said.