When you’re processing 20,000 building permits and 80,000 inspections a year, 90-day delays aren’t just inconvenient—they’re devastating. Contractors can’t pay their crews. Residents can’t move into their homes. And county staff spend their nights answering frustrated emails at 10 PM.
That was the reality Eric Landon inherited when he became Growth Management Director for Citrus County, Florida. But instead of rushing to buy new technology, Landon did something unexpected: he got in pickup trucks with contractors.
In this episode of Civic Innovators, hosts Noam Reininger, CEO of Accela, and Joe Morris, Chief Innovation Officer at Government Technology, sit down with Landon to unpack how Citrus County achieved what seemed impossible—a digital transformation so smooth that elected officials forgot it happened.
We’re Not a Building Department—We’re a Customer Service Department
Landon’s first principle transformed everything that followed: “We’re not necessarily a building department. We’re a customer service department.” This wasn’t just rhetoric—it became the lens through which every decision was made.
The legacy software wasn’t just slow. “We just didn’t know what we didn’t know,” Landon recalls. The 90-day processing times created an adversarial relationship between the county and the building community. Landon was fielding 200-300 phone calls daily and answering emails late into the night—a full-time firefighter, as he puts it, constantly reacting to crises rather than preventing them.
But viewing the department as customer service rather than regulatory enforcement changed the transformation strategy entirely. The question wasn’t just ‘What technology do we need?’ It was ‘How do we serve these people better?’
Listening as Technology Strategy
Citrus County’s approach to system selection was radical: rather than IT or management choosing the software, let the people choose it.
The team went on “field trips”—riding in pickup trucks with contractors, sitting in cubicles with staff in other counties, and asking one critical question: “If you had it to do all over again, would you pick this software again?”
This collaborative approach did something powerful: it broke down the adversarial wall.
“If the person that is applying for the permit is part of the problem solving, then they’re in,” Landon says. “You break down that adversarial wall of us versus them. This darn county, you know, they’re always slowing down the show. But if they agree with the county on the best possible solution and they work together with us on implementing it, then we’re both all in together working towards a common goal.”
The Soft Opening: Treating Launch Like a New Restaurant
Citrus County treated their software launch like opening a new business—with a “soft opening” that would let them work out kinks before the crowds arrived.
The Velvet Rope Strategy
“We kind of did a mock velvet rope where we let them in exclusively first. You guys are invitation only,” Landon explains. Regular customers who applied for permits daily became exclusive beta testers. They were asked to try to break the system, identify what didn’t work, so the team could fix it before going live.
“They were excited to kind of be on the front end and be part of the team that built the end product.”
Meet People Where They Are
Recognizing that people learn differently, Citrus County created three distinct pathways:
- YouTube Video Library: Two-minute-or-less tutorials on every task. “Anything that we could think of that would have a quick two-minute solution,” subject matter experts created videos explaining how to create logins, apply, pay, resubmit, and schedule inspections.
- “Accela 101” Classroom Training: Group sessions with up to 30 contractors walking through a dummy permit on a monitor, with open discussion and Q&A.
- White Glove Concierge Service: “If you don’t like using YouTube, if you don’t want to sit in a room classroom environment with other people, if you do best one-on-one, then we will apply with you for your first permit,” Landon explains. Staff sat at their desks with contractors, creating usernames and passwords together, walking through the first application step by step.
“We provided all those possible scenarios,” Landon says. “There was something for everyone no matter how you preferred learning.”
When Silence Becomes the Ultimate Success Metric
“In my position, how I measure success is the amount of phone calls I get,” Landon explains.
With the previous software implementation, he was getting 200-300 phone calls daily. He warned commissioners before this launch to expect their phones to go crazy based on past experience.
Three days after going live, Landon checked in with board members: “Have you heard anything? What’s the feedback?”
“Oh, I actually forgot about it. I didn’t even know that we went live. I haven’t heard anything.”
Week after week, Landon kept asking. The answer remained the same: silence.
“Silence is success,” Landon reflects. “When my email box is not full, my voicemail isn’t full. So things are working because no one’s complaining. It was eerily quiet and I was kind of waiting for the shoe to drop that never did.”
For a software launch processing 20,000 permits and 80,000 inspections annually, hearing nothing was extraordinary.
Looking Forward: One Phone Number for Everything
Citrus County isn’t stopping with permitting. Phase 2—covering planning and code enforcement—launches in spring 2025. But Landon has a bigger vision: one county-wide phone number for all government services.
The building department already operates a customer service hotline where residents reach a live agent—”which I think is unusual for local government where you can call a number and someone will actually answer on the other end.” When someone calls, agents troubleshoot issues and route them to the right person with a service request tracked for 24-hour response.
The future? One number for everything—stray dogs, code enforcement complaints, library hours, any local government question.
“What that does is it provides transparency and accountability,” Landon explains. “It’s transparent because I can look and see how many calls have we gotten, how many service requests have we gotten, how long does it take to get those responses and it guarantees a response to the customer.”
7 Key Lessons from Citrus County
- Get in the pickup trucks. Technology decisions should be made by people who use the technology—both staff and constituents. Visit other jurisdictions. Ask what works. Include end users from day one.
- Collaboration breaks down adversarial walls. When stakeholders help solve problems, they become teammates. The shift from “this darn county” to “we’re all in this together” is transformation’s greatest unlock.
- The soft opening strategy works. Let regular users test exclusively first. Make them feel like VIPs. Let them identify bugs. Build champions who help others after launch.
- Offer multiple learning paths. YouTube videos, classroom training, concierge service—meet people where they are. Not everyone learns the same way.
- Phase the hardest stuff first. Tackle the highest-volume, most critical function first. As Landon says: “Get the most difficult thing out of the way first, which is your highest volume user, and take those lessons learned and apply them to the things that aren’t quite as pressing.”
- Silence is success. In government transformation, when elected officials forget you launched and residents aren’t complaining, you’ve done it right.
- You’re a customer service operation. Whether you issue permits or answer questions about library hours, you’re in the customer service business. That mindset should drive every decision.
Citrus County proves that government digital transformation doesn’t require massive budgets or cutting-edge innovation. It requires something simpler and harder: actually listening to the people you serve, involving them in solutions, and meeting them where they are.
As Landon demonstrates, the key isn’t finding perfect software—it’s building the perfect process around it. A process rooted in partnership, transparency, and recognizing that “we’re a customer service department” isn’t just a tagline. It’s a transformation strategy.
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Ready to explore how your agency can follow Citrus County’s path? Book a demo to learn how Accela’s platform can support your transformation goals.
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Dive deeper into Eric Landon’s transformation journey, and read the full transcript below to discover the specific strategies, challenges, and solutions that made Citrus County’s success possible.
Noam Reininger (00:33):
Welcome to the Civic Innovators Podcast. This is where we have insightful conversations with leaders that are transforming how government services are delivered and elevating the experience of constituents. I’m Noam Reininger, the CEO of Accela.
Joe Morris (00:50):
And I’m Joe Morris, chief innovation officer at Government Technology Magazine. Today we’re headed to West Central Florida to talk about how one county went from long permitting delays into a streamlined customer centric experience and that set a new standard for service delivery. We’re going to be joined by Eric Landon, the growth management director for Citrus County.
So the big question we’re going to tackle today is how can counties transform their permitting experience and go through these large technology transformations while keeping customer centricity at the center. So, Eric, there are a lot of challenges with the legacy permitting system and you know, you really wanted to change customer service at the core. In the beginning, you had you know a lot of complaints from customers. There’s a lot of delays. Contractors weren’t happy and there was a lot of constituent complaints. So, tell us a little bit about, you know, the thesis behind this transformation.
Eric Landon (01:51):
Yeah. And I’ll begin with we’re not necessarily a building department. We’re a customer service department. And that’s kind of really we keep that in mind with everything we do. Although we issue building permits, the core is one-on-one interaction with customers and the key to that is keeping in mind that we’re a customer service provider. Just for reference, we have we issue about 20,000 building permits a year and we do about 80,000 inspections a year. They’re not all single family. They’re permits of all types. But when you have that amount of volume, you have to do it right. Otherwise things back up and as you said with our previous software, it was taking us 90 days to issue a permit because we just didn’t know what we didn’t know.
Joe Morris (02:40):
So you mentioned in the prep for this episode and kind of digging deeper on engaging stakeholders with the system selection process. You got in the pickup trucks with them. You met the end users right where they were. How did including kind of this community really shape the outcome and also build trust with the constituents?
Eric Landon (02:58):
Well, if the person that is applying for the permit is part of the problem solving, then they’re in. You know, if you get their buy in before you hit go, then they’re a teammate with you and you kind of break down that adversarial wall of us versus them. This darn county, you know, they’re always slowing down the show. They’re always holding us up. But if they agree with the county on the best possible solution and they work together with us on implementing it, then we’re both all in together working towards a common goal. Keeping the customer service in mind, we went to the end user. They’re the end user. The people that are issuing the permits on a daily basis are the end user. So we went to them because a solution doesn’t do any good coming from me. I’m always putting fires out. I say that’s my job is as a full-time fireman. By the time it comes to me, it’s too late. So, we don’t want someone in an IT office that doesn’t use it making the decision. We want the person that is applying for the permit and issuing the permit to make that decision on what the right technology is. So, we called around. We went on field trips. We had our counterparts sit in a truck with people in other counties. They sat in a cubicle with people in other counties and they said, ‘Well, what software do you use and does it work? And if you had it to do all over again, would you pick it again?’ And with the end user in mind, kept coming up and it seemed to be the most successful.
Joe Morris (04:34):
You know what stood out to me is intentionality, intentional about engaging the various communities that you did, intentional about working with other jurisdictions in the way that you did. And that kind of intentionality also worked its way through your implementation process. Your rollout was phased. It was transparent. You were very big on making sure that communication was coming frequently. How did you structure that implementation? So whether that was your staff, whether that was those contractors that you were talking about and ultimately the residents that you served weren’t overwhelmed. And as you look back at that process, what did you learn along the way?
Eric Landon (05:09):
Yeah. So, keeping customer service at the forefront, we treated it like the opening of any new business. And we did what’s called a soft opening. And it was we, you know, we had our usual customers that apply for permits every day. And we kind of did a mock velvet rope where we let them in exclusively first. You guys are invitation only. And while it was still in testing, we allowed them to be testers and try to break it, see what doesn’t work so that we can fix it when we actually go live. And they were excited to kind of be on the front end and be part of the team that built the end product. So, we started creating YouTube videos for using Accela once we went live and how do I create a login, a password, how do I apply, how do I pay, how do I resubmit, how do I create an inspection. So, anything that we could think of that would have a quick two-minute solution, we had one of our subject matter experts go in and create a 2 minutes or less YouTube video on how to do particular task. And we started putting all this on our website so that when you started to use Accela, you were like, well, I don’t know how to do this particular thing, but there would be a YouTube video right there explaining it. We did a classroom. We called it Accela 101 class where we had a couple of subject matter experts teach a class and it was kind of an open form. We would have 30 contractors sitting in a classroom. We would have a monitor up and we would be walking them through a dummy permit on how to apply, how to resubmit, how to schedule inspections and it was just an open discussion and people would raise their hands and ask questions and we would answer it. And then finally, we did what we call a white glove or a concierge service where if you don’t like using YouTube, if you don’t want to sit in a room classroom environment with other people, if you do best one-on-one, then we will apply with you for your first permit. So, you can come sit at one of our permit specialist desk and we will walk you through. We’ll create a username and a password and we’ll apply with you on your first application and then that way they feel comfortable with it. They actually know how to log in. They know what it looks like. So we provided all those possible scenarios and when we did that the drama was low when we actually went live. It wasn’t chaos. It wasn’t meltdown. It was everybody had already seen it. they’d already used it and in some form or fashion they felt comfortable learning on their own or watching videos or going to a class. There was something for everyone no matter how you preferred learning.
Joe Morris (07:59):
Yeah. When we kicked off the episode, we were talking about some of that what you called chaos, right? The delays that you were experiencing maybe in the past system. Now you’re in a whole different world where you’ve got all of the concierge, the training, you know, faster permitting. Maybe you can spend a moment talking about what are the results that you’re seeing today and then how do you measure success whether that success is for the staff that you got the public that you serve or the elected leaders that were kind of maybe in your ear a little bit on the past implementation.
Eric Landon (08:30):
Yes. So in my position how I measure success is the amount of phone calls I get. When we went live with a previous software, I was getting 200-300 phone calls a day and I was answering emails at 9-10 o’clock at night when I was going to bed. So, before we went live, I told all the commissioners, ‘Okay, we’re about to go live with the new software. I know we just did this recently and your phones went crazy. Be prepared. we’re gonna do everything we possibly can to lighten this lift, but be prepared just in case.’ And they were like, ‘Okay, we’re ready.’ So then we actually went live and maybe like three days later, I went to the board members one by one. I said, ‘Have you heard anything? What’s the feedback?’ And this is how I knew it was successful. They’re like, ‘Oh, I actually forgot about it. I didn’t even know that we went live. I haven’t heard anything.’ So by them not hearing anything, I knew it was more successful than the last time. So then another week goes by and a month goes by and I’m asking them every week on a weekly basis, well what have you what are you hearing? They don’t hear anything. So silence is success when you’re thinking especially in politics or if you’re thinking you know as a growth management director when I’m not my email box is not full my voicemail isn’t full. So things are working because no one’s complaining. So, that’s the easiest measure of success is everything’s quiet. Which is unheard of for going live with a software that processes 20,000 permits and 80,000 inspections is to not hear anything. So, I tell people if I get a dozen complaints a day, considering the volume of work that we do, that would be like a 4.9 out of five star rating on Google. So, I wasn’t even getting that. It was it was eerily quiet and I was kind of waiting for the shoe to drop that never did.
Noam Reininger (10:27):
Wow, that’s a tremendous turnaround story. And so, Eric, I’m curious. You know, you went from a really bad situation to a great situation and you’ve already pointed out a lot of lessons of the things that you did right in this implementation and the impacts and the results. I’m curious what other lessons and maybe we can go into how you managed the process and stakeholders like who was in the meetings how did you manage decisions like for another county that’s thinking about this and you know they heard about okay we got to do the homework we got to get the stakeholders involved what was your management process of how you got this done that led to these great results.
Eric Landon (11:10):
So we have three divisions we have the planning department we have the building department and we have code enforcement. The hottest burning stove is always the building department just because they have the most volume. So we decided to break it into phases. Building department being phase one. So we did nothing but the building department issuing building permits and doing inspections. Let’s do that first because that’s going to be the most difficult. So that went live first and then we were going to follow that up with phase two which would be the planning department and code enforcement and we can kind of take a little bit more time with those because those aren’t as hot of burning fires as the building department. So, so my thought is get the most difficult thing out of the way first, which is your highest volume user, and take those lessons learned and apply them to the things that aren’t quite as pressing when you have a little bit more time to work with it. Another thing that was really important is we have a very active builder alliance, building community. Building is very important in our community as it is probably in most and we had to engage with them on the very front end because it’s literally when it doesn’t work you’re going to get the phone calls from them saying you’re taking money for you know you’re taking the food out of my child’s mouth because I can’t get a building permit and I can’t get paid. So on the extreme end of it not working that’s the phone call that you’re getting. So, you want to make sure that they’re on board early on before you even make the decision.
Joe Morris (12:45):
It’s clear to me that your county has undergone a massive transformation and you walk through it on this episode. It’s also clear that this journey is not over. I can pick up your energy, your enthusiasm. What opportunities are getting you excited as you look at maybe 2026, whether that’s improving existing services or expanding on what the county can offer?
Eric Landon (13:06):
Yes. So, we still haven’t gone live with phase two. We’re in the midst of building that out. So, this spring we’ll go live with the planning department and with code enforcement. Also with service requests. So, I think service request is going to be the future for us. We have a customer service hotline that people can call for the building department and they’ll actually get a live agent, which I think is unusual for local government where you can call a number and someone will actually answer on the other end. Well, when they answer, they’ll try and troubleshoot what the question is and route it to the right person that can give them an answer. So, instead of just calling eight different people, you know, in the building department and hoping somebody answers, you just call the single number. They’ll troubleshoot it. They’ll get you to the exact person that has the answer and they’ll transfer it with a service request. That service request I can monitor or the supervisor can monitor and see how long it takes to get a response. So, we’ll get a phone number and an email from the person calling and the question that needs to be answered and then we hold a standard of 24 hours. Within 24 hours, they need to get a response back. I think that the future of that is driving that towards all county departments so that there’s one phone number that you can call and we can get you a service request. If you’re calling about a stray dog, if you’re calling about a code enforcement complaint, if you’re calling about what time has the library open, you can get the answer to any local government question out of one phone number that’ll be routed to a call center that’ll use service requests through Accela to get you an answer and hopefully within 24 hours. And what that does is it provides transparency and accountability. It’s transparent because I can look and see how many calls have we gotten, how many service requests have we gotten, how long does it take to get those responses and it guarantees a response to the customer.
Noam Reininger (15:07):
Eric, thank you so much for such an inspiring story. There were so many good nuggets in there of areas where you double down and I think there’s a lot to learn from how you approach the technology transformation. I think it’s inspiring because it shows what’s possible for government when you know the constituents, all of the stakeholders are listened to and put at the center when it’s done really well and it’s a tremendous success. So, thank you so much for sharing that with us today.
Eric Landon (15:40):
Thanks for giving me the opportunity to share.
Joe Morris (15:42):
Yes, it was a powerful reminder. This isn’t about software. It’s about culture, communication, and the commitment to just deliver a better experience.
So, thank you to our listeners for being here with us today for the Civic Innovators podcast. Until next time, ask the bold question.
