WESTLOCK — In collaboration with a firm out of Edmonton, Westlock County is digitizing its fire permiting process — converting the old paper application form into a format that can be completed online — to aid in record-keeping and to allow fire guardians to quickly check if a report of a fire is actually a controlled burn.
During their June 25 meeting, Westlock County councillors received a presentation from Philip Hicks, founder of Government Frameworks.com, on the digitization of the municipality's fire permits.
Chief administrative officer Tony Kulbisky said the county had engaged Government Frameworks to review the various application forms currently on the municipality's website. (While Government Frameworks is based out of Edmonton, the company works with clients across Canada, the U.S., Australia and New Zealand.)
Kulbisky noted there are 44 forms on the site that have no automated workflows, necessitating the use the of physical paper forms that make it challenging to store records properly.
Government Frameworks is assisting the county with the digitization of these forms with a process called FARMER, which stands for Forms Automation Records Management Executive Reporting.
Kulbisky said the initial focus of this project will be in digitizing the municipality's fire permits, including timesheets and expense forms related to the fire service.
Hicks said that every time a paper document comes through a municipality, "it takes over two and a half hours to handle one document." That equates to thousands of administrative hours, he indicated.
On the other end of the process, a resident needing a fire permit might need to download a PDF, print it out, scan it and e-mail it back to the county.
“It makes it quite challenging for a resident to process that particular form," he said.
Government Frameworks saw there was a real opportunity to streamline the processing of all forms and applications across a municipality, "eliminating a significant amount of time," Hicks said.
Digitizing the fire permit forms will allow them to be accessed through various platforms, such as Android, PC and tablets, he noted.
Hicks went on to describe some of the features that this digitized application will have, such as allowing residents with large land holdings to actually pinpoint on a map where a controlled burn will take place.
Besides cutting down on administrative time, a side benefit of this process is that fire guardians will be able to quickly look up permits to determine if a report of a fire called in through 9-1-1 is actually a controlled burn, potentially preventing an unnecessary dispatch of emergency services.
“Rather than dispatching all those personnel and all those assets, you can quickly make a phone call to the applicant and double check if this is a controlled burn," he said.
Deputy reeve Ray Marquette asked how the location of a fire permit is being visually checked using this process, such as whether it's located in a low-lying area or next to a swamp or forest.
Hicks noted that this process isn't eliminating the role of the fire guardians by instantaneously approving fire permit applications.
“The fire guardian will still be doing their due diligence to review the request before it’s been approved," he said.
Reeve Christine Wiese also asked how fire permit applications would be handled in the case of residents who aren't online, acknowledging this is a growing minority.
Hicks indicated those residents would still have to go through the process of getting a physical application and submitting it through the county office.
Coun. Jared Stitsen said he believed this process would eliminate a lot of the simple checks involved with controlled burns, such as when residents are asking to set up burn barrels.
