You can’t walk into a govtech conference right now without hearing about AI. What’s harder to find is a clear-eyed breakdown of what that actually means for a permitting counter, a plan review queue, or a code enforcement case.
On the most recent episode of the Accela Civic Innovators podcast, longtime civic technology leader Rob Lloyd joined Accela CEO Noam Reininger for a wide-ranging conversation on government transformation, and it’s also the episode where Rob steps into a new role: co-host of the show.
Rob currently serves as director for the Center for Digital Government, and brings more than 30 years of civic leadership to the conversation, including stints as CTO for the City of Seattle and as CTO and deputy city manager for the City of San Jose. He’s also a former Accela customer, having worked with the platform across both roles.
That combination, a career spent running civic operations and a current seat with national visibility across municipalities, gave the conversation a practical edge. Rather than talking about AI as one big idea, Rob broke it down into five distinct categories, each solving a different problem in the permitting and planning process.
5 ways AI shows up in permitting and planning
- Reviewing rules and laws.
Rob calls this one of the most overlooked applications. AI is well suited to comparing statutes, ordinances, and internal guidance to find where years of accumulated rules conflict or no longer align. He pointed to work Seattle did with the University of Washington’s Responsible AI Center, using retrieval-based models to review the city’s own regulatory history for exactly that kind of drift.
- Conversational bots.
Government language is often, in Rob’s words, so dense that even well-educated residentsaren’t sure what applies to them. A conversational tool that translates plain questions like “can I remove a tree on my lot?” into plain answers removes a real barrier, especially for non-English speakers or first-time applicants.
- Pre-check submittals.
Rob noted that a large share of AI investment so far has gone toward checking submissions beforethey’re formally filed, catching issues so applications don’t get rejected on a technicality. It’s valuable, but he was candid that this approach optimizes for “the perfect applicant” rather than the process itself.
- The perfect processor.
This is the internal counterpart: identifying where staff review actually slows down, whether that’s a utility check, a transportation review, or something else, and fixing the process itself rather than only the paperwork coming into it.
- Data and insights.
Rob shared an example from a recent city manager innovation council conversation: more than 20% of vacant lot listings on Zillow aren’t actively being prepared for development. Surfacing that kind of insight can help a city see, and act on, opportunities it didn’t know it had, particularly around housing and economic development.
Rob’s framing throughout was that different AI tools solve different problems for different people, and cities investing without that distinction risk solving the easy 90% of the problem while missing the part that actually moves the needle.
3 domains of friction
Noam connected Rob’s five categories back to how Accela thinks about the same challenge, organized into three domains where velocity gets added, and friction gets removed:
- Intake, where conversational tools and pre-check functionality make it simple to submit anything from a pothole report to a multi-permit commercial package
- Submittal and interdepartmental coordination, where the bottleneck is often not AI but visibility: knowing which department (structural engineering, utilities, and so on) is actually holding up a review, and whether it’s a process issue or a resourcing issue
- Regulatory change, where the goal is shrinking the time between a new law taking effect and that change showing up in a workflow, an area Noam described as ripe for low-code and configuration-driven tools
Rob also raised an idea worth sitting with: a “policy house” or benchmarking function that doesn’t yet exist for local government, one that could show which permit types and workflows work well in a dense urban core versus a small suburban community, since not every city is the same, but many of them rhyme.
A constant: change itself
One thread ran through the entire conversation: regulations will always change. New elected officials bring new priorities. Old rules sunset. Unexpected events, Rob used a major event like the World Cup as an example, can require entirely new permit types on short notice. The cities getting the most value out of AI, in Rob’s view, are the ones building systems that can absorb that constant change quickly, rather than treating each new regulation as a one-off project.
Rob and Noam also touched on what separates the agencies getting real value from transformation efforts: bringing CIOs into strategic conversations early rather than after decisions are made, treating point solutions as part of a longer-term platform strategy rather than one-off fixes, and building an ecosystem of partners instead of trying to solve everything internally.
Accela is thrilled to welcome Rob Lloyd as a new co-host of the Civic Innovators podcast, joining Noam Reininger for ongoing conversations with government leaders on what real modernization requires.
Listen to the entire episode here.
Frequently asked questions
What are the five types of AI applications in government permitting, according to Rob Lloyd?
Rob Lloyd, director for the Center for Digital Government, breaks AI applications in planning and permitting into five categories: reviewing rules and laws for conflicts, conversational bots that translate government language into plain terms, pre-check tools that catch submittal issues before filing, process improvements that address internal staff bottlenecks, and data insights that surface opportunities like undeveloped vacant lots.
Who is Rob Lloyd, and what is his current role?
Rob Lloyd is the new co-host of the Accela Civic Innovators podcast, joining CEO Noam Reininger. He currently serves as director for the Center for Digital Government and previously served as CTO for the City of Seattle and as CTO and deputy city manager for the City of San Jose, where he was also an Accela customer.
Why do experts say technology alone doesn’t fix permitting processes?
According to Rob Lloyd, the underlying problems in permitting and licensing are rarely about a missing piece of software. He argues that lasting improvement starts with identifying what an agency is actually trying to accomplish, whether that’s community safety, economic development, or reducing housing insecurity, before building or configuring a system around that goal.
How can AI help cities identify undeveloped land or economic opportunities?
Rob Lloyd cited an example from a city manager innovation council discussion showing that a meaningful share of vacant lot listings tracked by real estate platforms are not actively being prepared for development. AI-driven data analysis can help cities identify these opportunities and connect them to housing and development goals.
How does Accela think about reducing friction in government permitting?
Accela frames its approach around three domains: intake (making it simple for residents and businesses to submit requests), submittal and interdepartmental coordination (identifying where reviews get stuck between departments), and regulatory change (shrinking the time between a new rule taking effect and its reflection in workflow systems).
What should city leaders understand before starting a modernization initiative?
Rob Lloyd emphasizes understanding work at three levels: the operational level (day-to-day service delivery), the managerial level (coordinating staff, legal, and legislative requirements), and the strategic level (long-term outcomes set by city councils and city managers). Aligning all three, he says, is what allows a transformation effort to have a lasting impact rather than solving problems in isolation.
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Full episode transcript
Noam Reininger: [0:00] Welcome to the Accela Civic Innovators podcast, where we talk with government leaders who are transforming how services are delivered. Today is a special episode as we welcome longtime government technology leader Rob Lloyd to the podcast. Together, we’ll explore what successful government transformation really takes, from aligning people and processes to building long-term strategies that can adapt to changing priorities and deliver better outcomes for communities. Let’s dive into the conversation.
Noam Reininger: [0:32] Hello, and welcome to the Civic Innovators podcast. I am Noam Reininger, the CEO of Accela. So today we have a really special episode. We are introducing our new co-host. Some of you, and frankly a lot of you in the government technology circles, know him really well. It’s Rob Lloyd, and he’s currently the director for the Center for Digital Government. Rob is a longtime civic leader with over 30 years of experience. Recently, he was the CTO at the City of Seattle, and he was also the CTO and deputy city manager at the City of San Jose. What’s really exciting about the conversations we’re going to have with Rob is he’s got the inside view of what it really takes to modernize civic operations, specifically operationally, the technology. He’s done it multiple times as an operator, but he’s also got this much broader purview now, working with national leaders across the board in his current role as the director for the Center for Digital Government. So we are super excited to have you here, Rob.
Rob Lloyd: [1:47] Thank you. Thank you.
Noam Reininger: So start out, one of the great things about this conversation is that you were also a former Accela customer, and your role at Seattle, and so multiple times basically.
Rob Lloyd: Yeah, multiple times.
Noam Reininger: [1:59] And so it’d be great, you know, and you and I interacted quite a lot in that capacity. As you look back on working with Accela, what stood out the most out of that time?
Rob Lloyd: [2:02] I’ll tell you two things, Noam, and maybe it comes in generations. Number one is, underlying all of it was Accela’s quest to always be a platform that could give the fundamental want to make an organization, a city, a county, a state, successful in its endeavors, to be that administrative system that makes us successful so that you can kind of see things and orchestrate things. It’s had more successful periods and less successful periods, but always that want. And then more recently, as you and I got to work together, the ambition to say, how do you see that digital exhaust, and where things are working and not working? How do you match that with the ability to do change management? Which is where I think you’ve put some really good thoughts in front. But number two is also what’s around the people, and what other tools and work processes does Accela sit in the middle of. There’s a lot of kind of singular plays as a CIO or CTO or deputy city manager has to look at, and the world isn’t always that simple. So Accela has done a good job over the years trying to not just see things in a simple lens.
Noam Reininger: [3:31] So if we go to things that are not simple, it’s permitting processes. And one of the things that I’ve heard you say is, you know, technology and software alone does not fix permitting processes. Maybe you can expand on that a little bit.
Rob Lloyd: [3:48] Yeah. Yeah. And I think you probably know this as well as anyone from your multiple lives as well, is we say technology is really hard, but it’s actually usually the easiest part of the work that we do, because usually you have to start listening really hard and not solving problems, because the problems really are where you identify what’s really the matter, what we’re really trying to accomplish, and you strip things away first, and then you say here’s how we’re going to solve things across problem sets. Because when we take a look at the big problems that are facing us, and what permitting and licensing are really trying to solve, it’s not that you’re just trying to put out a permit or a license or a code violation. You’re trying to make a community safer. You’re trying to make economic development happen. You’re trying to solve homelessness and housing insecurity, and when you start with that premise you can unify departments. But absent that, why, people are just doing the ministerial part, and they say my process is what matters, not the outcome, or my steps, or my control.
Noam Reininger: [5:07] Yeah, that makes a lot of sense, and you have over 30 years of doing this at the front lines, so you’ve apparently got scars and lessons. And so one of the things that you said is really understand the work and understand how the work is interconnected across various departments. So for leaders undergoing a modernization effort, and they’re starting out, they’re thinking about new technology and a new selection process, what are some of the things you think they really need to understand on day one? And you started with really unpacking how the work is getting done, so maybe tell us a little bit more.
Rob Lloyd: [5:54] Yeah, I think one of the most important things you have to do with these transformation initiatives is just understand, identify with, and respect the deep knowledge of what you’re trying to accomplish, because it’s three levels that you’re trying to work at. One is the operational level, of trying to make people’s day-to-day work run well and deliver good services. Then managers are seeing things from a different lens, which is how do I do my job of orchestrating things across my staffs and accomplish the risk management and the legislative and legal requirements that we have. And then you have, at a third level, the strategic outcomes that your city council and your mayors and your city managers are saying we need to take our communities in a good long-term direction. And if you put those three things together, you can really have a strong conversation with your community and your organization saying, what are we trying to accomplish, and then how do we head in that direction? Where are we now? What are the process and systemic changes we have to make, and then how do we keep going in a good direction long term? Usually when we set directions we don’t converse first, it’s kind of a downward pressure or an emergency that causes us to move. And organizations at their best are more intentional and broad-reaching about here’s what we’re trying to do and here’s why, and here’s your part of the process, and in precious few places have I seen the organization actually do that.
Noam Reininger: [7:52] That makes a ton of sense. And so now you have this national purview, and you’re seeing a lot of different municipalities, big and small. What are you seeing that great leaders that are really driving successful transformations are doing very well, to get that strategic alignment, that inclusion, that continuous improvement? What are you seeing as some best practices across the cohort of municipalities that you’re talking to?
Rob Lloyd: [8:51] Yeah, and we had this conversation actually at the large city county CIO summit for our digital communities, and three patterns that we saw emerge were: number one, the great CIOs are being brought into this conversation where you’re not IT, and the CIO that’s being brought in after the fact, where hey, we need you to support something that the planning and development director or the code enforcement director or the police chief is saying I need. City managers, mayors, county executives are pulling in CIOs, at least the great ones, very early in that process, saying you’re going to co-own this transformation. Number two, those same people are saying there’s a problem in the moment where, for example, AI might be able to help with something, but I need to weave that in with my platform and my architecture. If I solve it now, it needs to be part of a broader and longer-term solution. And number three is they’re calling in their partners and saying, if that platform approach is my best answer, there’s a resourcing ecosystem partner scenario that I have to create.
Noam Reininger: [10:57] There’s clearly a mandate for speed, modernization, and you talked about building this community ecosystem. The ones that do it well don’t do it alone, right? They get brought in early, they’re building stakeholders at the city manager level, there’s stakeholders with vendors, might be the developer community that’s also a stakeholder. How have you seen that rolled out in practice so that it has teeth and it really works?
Rob Lloyd: [11:35] Yeah, and I think this is probably more of a conversation for us to have, Noam. A lot are still trying to figure that out, like what do you build inside your house and what are the partnerships that you create, because other people might come up with some really good ideas. I remember one of our first conversations, two years ago, you filled in some of the picture as I was plotting out what I was trying to do with Seattle. You gave me names I hadn’t heard of before and said, hey, these people are doing good things. You had a great strategy for saying, we’re going to have native solutions, we’re going to have partnerships, so that the best out there can be Accela partners and communities can be enabled in a very productive way that makes all three better. It’s kind of coopetition. You’re learning, you’re improving, but you’re also making sure that your own product is going well. And then the privacy, security, trust piece is so important right now, and what you can do as Accela versus what some of those singular plays can and can’t do does come up in contract negotiations, and you can bring a different armament to bear and be a strong partner in a different way where you can enable an ecosystem as one of the bigs. I always use this analogy: what separates Silicon Valley from the ones that tried to create it and couldn’t? The bigs didn’t eat the smalls, they created the next. So the ecosystem philosophy is I think Accela has this special place where you can help create the ecosystem.
Noam Reininger: [13:58] I appreciate that. And one of the conversations that’s now coming up in every ecosystem discussion is AI. You can’t go to any technology conference, any govtech conference, and not hear or not talk about AI, and have it be at the forefront. So from your purview now, working with multiple jurisdictions and municipalities, what are people really getting right, and then what do you believe still needs to be figured out?
Rob Lloyd: [14:30] Well, taking a step back on AI, I think there are five types of AI application when it comes to planning, permitting, and development. You and I have had this conversation, and I used to have three and I split into five. One is where AI can really improve the rules and laws, and that’s probably one of the most neglected. AI is really good at reviewing and comparing things, that probabilistic regression math behind it, that consumption, the rag models are wonderful at that. In Seattle we did some fun work with the University of Washington Responsible AI Center, under Professor Bill Howe, to take a look at all the statutes, take a look at ordinances, take a look at our rules and guidances and processes, and see where all the laws we’ve created over the last 20 years conflict or don’t match. The next one is conversational bots. You and I are well-educated. If we go into our communities and said, can I remove a tree on our lot, it’s so obtuse we probably still don’t know. But a conversational bot could use plain language and remove accessibility issues of multilingual or simplicity, and say, well, it appears that you could, would you like to contact staff, would you like to start the process. Ninety-plus percent of investment has gone into pre-check submittals, that type of AI tech, really useful, a high return, where you can make sure that what’s submitted follows archetypes and doesn’t have such a high rejection issue, and great for communities and the person, but it goes towards the philosophy of a perfect applicant. There’s some value there. The fourth one, I used to merge these two but they rightfully are two different ones, is the perfect processor. Does the staff process go really well, where is it getting bogged down, is it a utility check, is it a transportation check, and those get bogged down a lot, so how do we clean that up, and where can we make the city more effective, because it’s not always the applicant’s fault. Then there’s data insights. In housing, we just had our city manager innovation council, and Zillow shared that over 20% of the real estate postings they have are vacant lots, but they’re not activated to be developed. So could they help change the face of housing and housing insecurity if cities can see those and figure out a way to ready them for development. So lots of analytics where AI can be a transformative force in ways we’ve never actually addressed before. AI is something a lot are looking at, but you have to categorize them, because different AI, different tools, different tech, different people to do different things, and we’re seeing different investment patterns. Does any of that help though?
Noam Reininger: [18:21] Yes, one hundred percent of what we’re seeing. But I’d be curious to know from what you’re seeing, because you were one of the most informative conversations I had when we were mapping out the Seattle PACT executive order under Mayor Harrell, where we were starting to make some significant progress on speed and experience. You gave me some of those insights on which vendors were actually showing some productive improvement for cities and how you were setting your strategy. What would you share is the biggest insight?
Rob Lloyd: [18:54] Yeah. So you went from three to five, and I’m going to take it back to three just to make things simple. Government outcomes are complex. You started with the outcome of the permit essentially being economic development and safety, if you think about permitting, licensing, and there are sometimes dozens of departments that need to come together with not so well-informed constituents and residents, and sometimes developers, interacting with this complex system. So we’re thinking about it in three different domains, first adding velocity and taking out friction. The first is intake, your number two and number three, the conversational bot and the pre-check, which is I want to interact with the government entity I’m working with in a simple way, whether it’s a tree down and it’s a service request, or a pothole at a specific location, or I have to submit a multi-permit complex package to get a building plan approved. I think AI has tremendous potential there, on the conversational side as well as the pre-submittal check, and there’s an area where that goes together, which is I’ve had a conversation with you to get to a deterministic simple answer of the service that you need, and then I’m checking that your submittal, that’s essentially what comes into the government civic factory, is the raw material, is that submittal request and the plans, make that as clean as possible, and we believe that takes a lot of friction out of that process, and that’s been our initial focus area, that first interaction and then the submittal. What you mentioned is now there’s multiple departments that need to coordinate, and it might be the structural engineering department, and that review that’s really taking the most time. So if you put in a bot that speeds up the intake but you have a really small team doing structural reviews, you might still have really long permitting processing times. Some of the most important things there might not be AI, it’s actually insights and KPIs to identify where those bottlenecks are, so that the system, and it may just be that it needs to be resourced. Now we are going to add AI to those components as well, for simple things like need to validate that the contractor working on this lot has a valid certificate, those are things that really can be sped up by AI. I think the one area you touched on a little bit, which is our third domain, around regulations, it’s not so much to help cities figure out all of their regulation and which ones may be conflicting or simplify, but the one constant with the regulatory environment is change. Regulations are going to change, there’s going to be new ones, old ones will be sunset, new elected officials will come in with initiatives, and there’ll be things like the World Cup, and the need for special permit types for a large event like that. So the third domain of AI, where we’re investing and there needs to be a big impact, is enabling the system to change itself. This is where some of us are experimenting with vibe coding, so that from the day a regulation happens to when it’s actually available in workflow is much, much faster, and the friction gets taken out of that. There should be a kind of policy house, what works really well in what contexts, and what doesn’t work really well, and the research on this as a policy lab really hasn’t been there, even though there are billions of dollars each year affected by this. What kind of business permit works really well in a hyper urban dense community with over 500,000 people versus a small suburban community in the Midwest, and could you package that type of permit or that type of business flow. Because not every city is the same, but some of them rhyme, and that could really help some communities accelerate their recoveries.
Noam Reininger: [23:31] Yeah, I think you’re spot on, and AI isn’t necessarily the solution because it’s earlier, but it’s going to help accelerate, which is benchmarking. So if you really understand best of the best, what is the tech, what’s the process, what are the permit types, what does a workflow look like for best-of-the-best velocity and the least amount of friction for specific segments of cities in terms of size and potential geography, what does that look like, and where does one city compare to the next, and then how do you get there as quickly as possible. Well, look, I know we’re at time. We are so glad that we had this conversation today. I’m extremely excited to have you as a co-host. We also have our new Accela branding as part of this and our brand refresh, and what we want everybody to know is that we are fully committed to continuing to improve, enhance, modernize, and innovate, to speed up, add more velocity to those civic processes, primarily around community development and asset management, and take friction out of the process. Rob, welcome on board. So glad to continue this conversation that we started when we met at Seattle, and continue it here. And for all of those that are listening, see you on our next podcast.
