The Canadian province of British Columbia covers an enormous area which is generally rich in natural resources and natural beauty. Interestingly, the vast majority of that land is owned by the Crown and is therefore administered by the BC government. A range of departments thus considers applications for permits to perform a bewildering array of activities within the forests, on the ground and beneath the surface of the land. Some of these activities are exclusive, e.g. open cast mining, whereas many others can occur in the same area at the same time, e.g. forestry and fishing. It is the job of each department to assess new permit applications and to determine if there is any reason why they should not be granted, or if any restrictions should be placed upon them. This process could take years in some cases to complete and this delay was recognised as being harmful to business - it simply had to be speeded up and be made more transparent.
The BC government recognised very quickly that businesses who were considering an operation within British Columbia needed to be able to submit an application for a permit with some degree of confidence that it would be successful and that they would know the result within a reasonble time frame. The key was seen as making information about permits available online so that applicants could determine what activities were taking place in a given area and therefore be able to assess the likelehood of their own application being successful.
The approach required changes to provincial legislation and the formation of a new body to administer the integrated Provincial registry. Existing land ownership and permit data needed to be enhanced in some cases to ensure that each permit could be associated with a location/area and a time window. Data was then published from existing permitting systems into a central registry - the Integrated Land and Resource Registry (ILRR) from where key information could be accessed online by government staff and the general public.