One of the things I have learned working in local government is that there can be a considerable difference between information being public and information actually being easy to find. Planning applications are a good example. The plans, supporting documents, meeting materials, and application records are public, but finding the right information has often required someone to already know a project name, an application number, or where in the town’s permitting system to look.
That is not how most people experience development in their community. A resident is much more likely to know that something is being proposed on the property they pass on the way to work, near their neighborhood, or at an intersection they recognize. They may have heard about a proposal from a neighbor or noticed activity on a site and simply want to know what is happening there. Requiring someone to translate that curiosity into the language and structure of a permitting database creates an unnecessary barrier.
That was the problem I wanted to solve when I began working on a new map of active planning applications in review by the Planning & Economic Development Department. The town already had most of the pieces. OpenGov, our permitting system, contains the official application records and documents. ArcGIS, our geographic information system, gives us the ability to present information spatially. What we did not have was a connection between the two.
Building that connection required some experimentation. I am a planner, not a software developer, and there was no ready-made button that simply linked the two systems together. I used artificial intelligence as a technical assistant to help work through the OpenGov and ArcGIS interfaces, understand how the two systems could exchange information, write and troubleshoot the necessary code, and test the process until it worked reliably. The result is a system that now checks OpenGov automatically, updates a geographic layer in ArcGIS, and makes that information available through the map on the department’s website.
I think there is something useful in that process beyond the map itself. Local governments, particularly smaller ones, do not always have dedicated staff available to build custom software or integrations. Increasingly, though, we have access to tools that can help staff bridge some of those gaps. Used carefully, they can allow us to solve problems that might otherwise require outside consultants, additional software, or simply remain on a wish list for lack of capacity.
The result for residents is much simpler than the work behind it. Someone can open the map, find the part of Smithfield they are interested in, click on an application, and see basic information about the proposal. From there, they can go directly to the public application record in OpenGov and review the plans and other materials submitted to the town. The map updates automatically as applications move through the review process.
Municipal planning necessarily involves a fair amount of procedure. Applications have case numbers, filing requirements, technical review steps, public hearings, and formal decisions. Those processes exist for good reasons, but they can also make local government difficult to navigate for someone who does not work with them regularly. I do not think our responsibility ends with making information technically available. We should also make a reasonable effort to organize public information in a way that people can understand and use.
There is value in helping people reach the actual application materials more quickly. Development proposals have a way of traveling through a community by word of mouth, and the details can change a little each time they are repeated. A project may be described as approved when it has only recently been submitted, or an early concept may be discussed as though it were a final plan. Giving people an easy path to the actual record does not eliminate disagreement, nor should it, but it does give everyone a better common starting point for the conversation.
The map is intentionally neutral. Its purpose is not to promote or criticize any application. It does not replace legal notice, a public hearing, Planning Board review, or the official record maintained by the Town. It simply gives residents another way to find that record and understand where an application is in the review process.
For me, this is part of a larger question about how my Department communicates and takes advantage of technological advances. We have more information available to us than ever before, but simply publishing more of it does not necessarily result in more transparency. A document can be online and still be effectively invisible if someone does not know where to look for it. A permitting system can contain everything a resident wants to know while still being difficult to navigate if they do not know the terminology used by the system. Sometimes improving public access means finding a better way to connect information that already exists. In this case, that meant taking two systems that were doing different jobs and figuring out how to make them work together.
Smithfield will continue to grow and change, as every community does. Part of planning responsibly for that change is making sure residents have a meaningful opportunity to understand what is being proposed and to participate when decisions are being made. Making the public record easier to find is only one part of that work, but I think it is a worthwhile one. If something is being proposed in Smithfield, residents should not have to know the right application number, the right terminology, or the right government database to begin learning about it. They should be able to start with the place they know and find their way from there.
Gregory Guertin, Smithfield Planning Director
