We Have a Tool for Everything, But a System for Nothing
Announcing the 2026 Permitting Technology Landscape Report
After four years of research, an answer to why permitting takes so long despite billions in technology investment. The answer surprised me.
Four years ago, working with infrastructure permitting teams at 18F — the federal government's digital services agency — I kept hearing the same frustration:
"We have a tool for this, but it doesn't talk to their system."
"The data exists — it's just in seven different places."
"Each agency built something great. None of it connects."
So I started counting. How many permitting technology tools actually exist? Where are they? What do they do?
Today, I'm releasing what we found and what I've since built on: The 2026 Permitting Technology Landscape Report.
The short version? America has plenty of sophisticated permitting technology. The research turned up over 300 tools, and that's an undercount. The problem isn't scarcity. The problem is that nobody has the authority to make them work together.
The Number That Reframed Everything
When we started systematically cataloging permitting technologies at 18F in 2021, we found around 80 tools. That seemed reasonable for a complex regulatory system.
Then we built a framework — organizing tools by system type, permitting phase, and task — and searched again.
We found over 300.
Not because new tools had appeared. Because we finally had a way to see what was already there. Tools buried in agency intranets. Vendor platforms white-labeled for government. Regional solutions nobody had documented. Open-source projects quietly doing work that mattered.
The inventory is public now. You can search, filter, and analyze it. Every tool is mapped to function, phase, and jurisdiction.
But the count isn't the finding. The finding is what happens when you map 300+ tools and realize almost none of them talk to each other — even though over 75% have API capabilities.
That's why major infrastructure projects still take 4-7 years despite decades of technology spending. Historical data shows NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act) timelines averaging 70 months, and that was back in 2017.
The Abundance Paradox
Here's the pattern we documented. When we organized tools by system type:
54 mapping and spatial analysis tools, no standard format for sharing data between them
44 permit tracking tools, no unified multi-agency view
39 public engagement tools, no coordination for communities navigating overlapping comment periods
26 collaboration platforms, none with permit-specific workflows
Every system type has multiple tools. None have integration standards across agencies.
The full report documents all ten system types and 300+ tools. The pattern is the same everywhere: good technology, persistent delays. I call this the Abundance Paradox. More tools haven't solved the problem because the problem was never about having too few. It's that nobody has the decision-making authority to require integration.
Each new tool, built without integration standards, creates another data silo, another workflow that needs translation, another format that won't talk to the one next door. We didn't have too few tools. We had too many that couldn't work together.
Two Gaps Where Governance Is Missing
The report identifies two gaps where the lack of integration infrastructure hits hardest. Both create the same kind of overhead — staff time burned on system translation, data reformatting, and manual workarounds instead of environmental analysis. The technology to close them exists. The authority to deploy it doesn't.
The full report includes cost methodology. The overhead runs into hundreds of millions annually for federal, state, and local governments alone.
Gap 1: Collaboration without integration. Twenty-six collaboration platforms exist across government. Teams, Slack, SharePoint. None include permit-specific workflows. When the Army Corps of Engineers coordinates a wetland permit requiring sign-off from EPA, Fish and Wildlife Service, a state environmental agency, and tribal consultation, staff toggle between email threads, shared drives, and calendar invites — manually tracking who's reviewed what and what's still pending.
The collaboration tools work fine. They just don't know anything about permits. Agencies spend 15-20% of review time on coordination overhead that should be automated.
Gap 2: AI without governance. Sophisticated AI tools exist for document analysis and comment summarization. The Department of Energy has deployed AI-NEPA for environmental document analysis. The technology works.
But there's no framework to make sure AI strengthens environmental analysis rather than shortcuts it, maintains public trust, or shares capabilities across agencies. Most agencies either avoid AI entirely — leaving staff to manually process thousands of public comments — or deploy it inconsistently, creating legal risk while missing the efficiency gains.
AI could process millions of comments instead of sampling thousands. Without governance frameworks establishing who decides how AI gets deployed, that capability sits idle.
What I’m Not Saying
I want to be careful here, because this gets misread.
This isn't an argument for faster permitting at the expense of environmental protection. The same analysis is still needed. Integration saves coordination time, not analytical rigor.
Agencies haven't failed, either. Individual agency technology is often impressive. The gap is between agencies, not within them.
And the last thing this system needs is tool #306. It needs governance infrastructure, data standards, and interoperability protocols that let existing tools work together. Not federal mandates. Voluntary frameworks that create competitive advantages will move faster and last longer than anything imposed from above.
What's in the Full Report
The report includes an inventory analysis of over 300 tools mapped by system type, phase, ownership, and jurisdiction. It breaks down ownership distribution (42% private sector, 38% federal, the rest split across state, nonprofit, and open source) and an API readiness assessment showing over 75% of tools have some integration capability. The barriers are governance, not technology.
It goes deep on the two gaps above, with cost methodology, and lays out strategic implications for federal agencies, states, vendors, and project developers. There's also the full framework reference I used to map the landscape — useful if you want to assess your own jurisdiction's integration gaps.
What Comes Next
This report documents the problem. But documentation isn't the destination.
In the coming weeks, I'll release the framework developed to address this governance gap — a layer that builds integration infrastructure without requiring new technology or federal mandates.
I'm not asking you to adopt something built in isolation. I'm inviting you to help figure out whether we got it right.
If you work in permitting — federal, state, local, tribal, or private sector — your experience is exactly what's needed.
Get Involved
Read the report: The complete analysis is available now. Dig into the data. Challenge the conclusions. Tell us what is missing. Read the Full Report →
Check the inventory: All 300+ tools are documented and searchable. If you use a tool not captured, let us know. Explore the Tool Inventory →
Sign up for updates. Throughout 2026, we're working with practitioners to validate the integration framework. If you want to follow along or weigh in, this is where that happens. Sign Up for Updates →
