To: Board of Supervisors
From: John Kopchik, Director, Conservation and Development
Report Title: Software as a Service Migration and Licensing Contracts with Accela, Inc.
☒Recommendation of the County Administrator ☐ Recommendation of Board Committee
RECOMMENDATIONS:
APPROVE and AUTHORIZE the Conservation and Development (DCD) Director, or designee, to execute contracts with Accela, Inc., in the amounts and terms listed below. These contracts cover services related to the permitting system used by DCD and the Public Works Department (Accela Civic Platform).
1. Software as a Service (SaaS) Migration Services - Contract with Accela, Inc., in an amount not to exceed $160,000 to provide services to migrate the on-premise Accela Civic Platform instance to the Accela Cloud (SaaS platform) for the period June 1, 2024 through December 31, 2025.
2. Cloud-Based Services - Contract with Accela, Inc., in an amount not to exceed $5,000,000 to provide Cloud-based licensing model where Accela, Inc., securely maintains the software, hardware, and data for the period June 1, 2024 through May 31, 2031.
FISCAL IMPACT:
No impact to the County General Fund. Costs will be covered by revenues development application fees.
BACKGROUND:
Accela Civic Platform (Accela) is the main software system used by the Department of Conservation and Development (DCD) for tracking building, code enforcement, planning, and Public Works Department (PWD) applications. The system allows for the collection of applications and related fees, facilitates review of applications and documents, and enables issuance of permits.
The system allows both DCD and PWD to process permits and to communicate with the public in an efficient manner. The ePermits Center portal of Accela allows for the public to apply and access permit/record information over the internet. Accela also allows DCD's building inspectors and other field staff instant access to the live data on their mobile devices, which enables them to make informed decisions in the field. Historical data from the system is used to generate comprehensive reports for use by the County and various local, state and federal agencies. Accela data also feeds into the Public Works Department joint billing system for faster and accurate project billing. Accela is a critical tool in DCD’s and PWD's daily operations, and the recommended contracts are necessary to maintain DCD's permitting and application services.
Accela is currently housed on-premises and is supported by DCD Information Technology (IT) staff. Our existing contract with Accela expires in 2025 but our current on-premise version is no longer supported by Accela. Accela announced they will no longer be supporting all on-premise hosted environments in 2025. Migrating now to the Accela SaaS platform will meet Accela’s support cut off deadline in 2025 and allow for the Accela system to always be on the most current version release without disruption of services for department end users and the public.
Accela’s liability under the agreement is limited to the amount paid by the County in the 12 months before the claim arose except for bodily injury or breach of confidentiality claims.
CONSEQUENCE OF NEGATIVE ACTION:
If these contracts are not approved, the Department will lose the support, maintenance, and upgrade ability for the Accela Civic Platform Permitting System. Not approving the contract for the migration of the on-premise Accela system to the Accela SaaS platform will leave the Department with an Accela Civic Platform version that is out of date and open to security vulnerabilities. DCD will also lose its place in the Accela, Inc., queue for agency migrations. Securing a new spot in the migration queue may take longer than a year. Not approving the contracts will hinder the ability to file, process and track building permits, code enforcement cases, planning applications and Public Works permits and revenue collection in a secure and updated software version for Unincorporated Contra Costa as well as the cities DCD is contracted to serve as the building inspection department. These five (5) jurisdictions are the cities of Clayton, Hercules, Lafayette, Orinda and the town of Moraga. Public user access to the permit portal will also be negatively impacted if the Accela system is made unavailable due to security vulnerabilities.