When people think of Boise, they often picture outdoor adventures, a vibrant food scene, and a rich cultural tapestry. It’s no surprise that special events are a staple of life here, filling residents' calendars throughout the year. Whether it's the monthly First Thursday featuring local vendors and live music or large-scale celebrations like the Treefort Music Fest, there’s something for everyone. These events often require months—sometimes a year—of careful planning to secure the necessary permits and vendors. Despite special events’ cherished importance to Boise’s economy and culture, the permitting process was clunky, antiquated, and confusing; it even required a long paper application!
A 90-Page Paper Application
To secure a special events permit, event organizers had to navigate varying sub-processes in multiple City of Boise departments, including Clerks, Parks, Police, and Fire and Safety, and even coordination with some departments outside of the City. Depending on the specifics of the event, organizers could have additional forms and applications to complete that were specific to each department. To aid event organizers in this process, departmental staff developed guides and checklists for their own sub-application and sub-permit. Though well-intentioned, the multiple and varying applications, forms, guides and checklists were often confusing, especially for first-time event coordinators who had never worked with the City before.
Over the years, event coordinators developed close working relationships with City staff in the various departments, who acted as guides through the often complex permitting journey. City employees from various departments dedicated significant time to assist the public, helping to ensure that the necessary paperwork was in place and all requirements were met to gain City approval for the required permits to hold special events.
While the human connection was invaluable, the process itself was cumbersome leading to an over-dependence of staff time and knowledge. Staff frequently spent time on the phone or meeting in-person with event coordinators to help them navigate the long application process. Though staff were supportive, this approach disrupted their workflow and wasn’t a sustainable solution as Boise continued to grow. Something had to change!
Bridging the Gap Between People, Permitting, and Technology
Recognizing the wide-felt frustrations and process challenges, PPI worked with a team of City employees who were hand-selected for their depth of knowledge and proximity to the process within their specific department. PPI facilitated this cross-departmental team to collaboratively understand the special events permitting process across all of the City departments and to eliminate unnecessary steps, reduce paperwork (especially the number of sub-applications), reduce the fees, and to ultimately create an intuitive online application that met all City Code and legal requirements.
The solutions to these entrenched process problems didn’t come overnight. It took extensive process mapping, a voice of the customer session with a group of event coordinators, multiple workshops with the cross-departmental team to uncover root causes, and several iterations of the e-application to develop the new online permitting process.
The Evolution of a Solution: Blame the Process, Not the People
The team’s first step was to create detailed process maps of the special events permitting journey within each City department. These process maps helped to:
Understand how the process worked across different departments.
Identify bottlenecks, errors, and frustrations.
Highlight areas where steps weren’t standardized.
Discover where value was added—or lost—at each stage.
Estimate how long the process took.
Through process mapping, the team learned that the special events permitting process involved 7 different City fees that often couldn’t be paid together, along with an additional 10 fees and service contracts from various vendors and agencies, which was a surprising discovery–even for the Boise staff involved! With 17 different fees and contracts popping up at various stages of the process, event coordinators felt caught off-guard and ill-prepared.
To make sure the improvement project addressed real pain points, the team brought in event coordinators from a variety of organizations to share their experiences navigating the process.
This "Voice of the Customer" (VOC) feedback was invaluable for several reasons:
It identified real customer needs and expectations.
It helped build empathy between Boise staff and end-users.
It uncovered problems that weren’t visible to City staff as they worked within the process.
It created insights on how to increase customer satisfaction and loyalty.
One of the key takeaways from the VOC: while people enjoyed working with the City staff—who were always friendly and patient—the real frustration lay in the application process itself. Multiple fees, complex paper forms, and strict deadlines made the process hard to complete correctly: event coordinators often had to submit their paper applications multiple times at any given step before they could move forward with the permit process.
One City, One (Special Events Permit) Application
Recognizing the need for a more efficient special events permitting process, the City of Boise set out to modernize its application system by leveraging Accela, the platform already in use for different types of permitting and other city services. A cross-departmental team reimagined the application process with a strong emphasis on improving the overall user experience.
Moving the special events permit application online provided an opportunity to enhance communication and transparency like never before. During the VOC session, event organizers expressed a need for better status updates on their applications. In response, the team implemented automatic notifications and reminders, ensuring organizers received timely updates on key milestones—such as when to start an application for regularly scheduled annual events, completing any missing details, and other critical deadlines.
To further support event organizers, the team introduced an “intake” form, designed to provide upfront clarity on expected fees and necessary supplemental permits. By completing the intake form before submitting a full application, organizers gained a clearer understanding of costs based on their event type, which reduces surprises throughout the process. Additionally, the team streamlined and consolidated fees and supplemental permit applications, eliminating redundant paperwork and creating a more seamless experience.
Another key insight from the VOC session was that the City’s special events permit website was difficult to navigate and lacked clear, accessible information. To address this issue, the team collaborated with IT to simplify the site’s language, reorganize content, and create a more intuitive layout. These changes ensure that event organizers can quickly find the information they need without requiring additional assistance from City staff.
By simplifying and refining the process within the online platform, the improvements reduce manual steps, decrease the number of touch-points with City staff, and cut down on the number of fees by over 50%. This transformation not only makes the permitting process more efficient, but it also enables event organizers to spend more time focusing on the community they serve, rather than getting bogged down by paperwork.
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