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Virginia Permit Transparency (VPT)

Initiative

Virginia Permit Transparency brings transparency and efficiency to the Commonwealth of Virginia's permitting, licensing, and certification processes by providing a centralized platform to track the daily status and timeline of critical steps as the application progresses. ODGA was enlisted to assist with the data visualization aspect of this project.

Learn More about VPT Here: About VPT

 

ODGA’s Work

In 2022, The Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) developed an early version of VPT, the Permitting Enhancement and Evaluation Platform (PEEP), to track the permitting and approval process for DEQ permit applications. This initiative was later expanded to become VPT. ODGA took on the task of recreating and enhancing the original permit tracking dashboard by transforming the initial Tableau dashboard into a more robust Power BI dashboard, while also developing similar dashboards for additional agencies (List of Additional Agencies).

These dashboards are internal to each agency, with access restricted so that agencies can only view their own data. They enable users to monitor permit requests, track processing times, and compare actual turnaround against target fulfillment times. Currently, the dashboards serve 201 users across ten agencies.

Additionally, DEQ offers public-facing external dashboards that allow citizens to view permit requests and processing times. You can access these external dashboards here: Microsoft Power BI.

 

DEQ External Dashboard of bar charts showing a performance summary

Figure 1: DEQ External Dashboard

 

Feedback

The Governor’s office commented on working with the ODGA team, stating, “The ODGA team has been a great asset to the VPT project. They helped the Commonwealth save money instead of utilizing a vendor. In addition, they have been extremely responsive and prompt in completing their tasks, providing a high-quality product completed to our specifications.” The Governor’s office also commented on the money saved by working with the ODGA team. They estimated that there was a cost avoidance of $200,000, which is what they would have spent if they needed to work with an external vendor for the same project.

Quotes from VPT Staff About ODGA:

  • "Working with them was a pleasure… I never felt like it was a chore to engage with the ODGA team."
  • "They were extremely responsive… we didn’t have to wait for answers or follow up."
  • "They were incredibly dedicated and hardworking."
  • "The ODGA team excelled in critical thinking and were flexible when we had to add more reports last minute."
  • "They were patient with all our questions and handled occasional rework requests seamlessly."
  • "They built the reports quickly, asked insightful questions, and were a pleasure to work with. I'd be happy to collaborate with them again."