Bringing Street Permits Online for a Major City Government

The challenge

A major Northeast city’s technology department wanted to modernize how it issues street permits, the approvals contractors, utilities and residents need before working in or occupying the public way. Applying meant paperwork and in-person visits, and the underlying permit data lived in multiple legacy databases that were slow and hard to work with.

The city needed a modern, public-facing application, a reusable foundation for permitting across departments, and a faster, consolidated database underneath.

What we did

Working alongside the city’s digital team, SunAge:

• Led technical design sessions, working through architecture and new features with the team at the whiteboard before building.
• Designed, built and supported a new ASP.NET application with C# and React for street permits, so the public can apply online, including through self-service kiosks.
• Created ASP.NET Web API endpoints in C# to support citywide permitting, giving other city systems a consistent way to work with permit data.
• Analyzed the legacy data, defining relationships, mapping fields and validating records ahead of the migration.
• Migrated data from multiple legacy databases into SQL Server, improving performance and giving the city one reliable source of permit information.

The outcome

• Street permits available online and at kiosks, reducing paperwork and counter visits.
• A reusable API layer that supports permitting across the city.
• A consolidated, faster SQL Server database with validated, well-structured data.
• An application the city’s team could continue to run and extend.