The ITS Application Development team worked closely with the Idaho Department of Water Resources (IDWR) to unveil a multi-faceted, online tool that is saving hundreds of hours every year for both well drillers submitting construction applications, and IDWR staff that reviews them.
IDWR Well Drillers is an application with two parts. The first is a public-facing website where verified drilling company employees can register an account and apply for well drilling Start Cards, Long Form Driller Permits, and Blanket Permits.
The application collects information on the proposed well, including exact coordinates taken from a GIS-powered map where the user selects the drilling location with a click or tap on the map. Once a user submits the permitting information, they can immediately download their Start Card permit (if associated with a prepaid tag) and make an online payment using Tyler Idaho payment services. The permit is entered into a staging database as pending IDWR review, and an email is sent to notify IDWR staff.
The second part of the Well Drillers process is an internal website where IDWR employees can evaluate a driller’s requests and verify appropriate fees are paid. Once the evaluation is complete, permits are imported into the IDWR Enterprise database where information can be accessed by several existing IDWR processes.
Goals with these applications are to:
- Reduce PDF/paper method for submitting applications
- Reduce data entry by IDWR staff
- Increase accuracy of information obtained
- Accept and associate online payments for well drilling permitting effort
- Provide drillers with visibility into their purchased and allocated tags
- Provide drillers with an immediate download of a Start Card permit
This new application was deployed in April and is being rolled out to the driller community. With the success of this deployment, IDWR immediately prioritized an enhancement that changes how they have historically allocated well tags from pre-purchasing them in bulk to having a single tag at the time the driller submits a Start Card permit.
Stats
- 375 staff hours saved using the new tool versus manual data entry
- There are approximately 300 licensed well drillers in Idaho
- 4,500 well construction applications processed annually between April to October
