Case Study: City and County of Denver achieves streamlined marijuana licensing and case management to handle a tenfold surge in applications with Accela

City and County implements new licensing process and boosts efficiencies with accessible data

The City and County of Denver’s Department of Excise and Licenses (DEL) faced an unprecedented surge in marijuana licensing and public-records requests after Colorado legalized recreational cannabis. With no existing model to follow, DEL was overwhelmed by a tenfold increase in applications, growing paper records, rising call and media volume, tight timelines and operational hurdles such as cash-only payments because banks would not serve marijuana businesses.

Partnering with Accela and TruePoint Solutions, DEL extended the Accela Civic Platform to centralize and automate licensing, inspections and records, add automated notifications and enable cross-agency data sharing. The solution supports more than 100 record types, cut average processing times from weeks to days despite soaring volumes, improved reporting and transparency (more than 1,100 marijuana licenses across 500 locations by 2017), and is projected to save about $3.5 million over five years while enabling future online transactions and mobile inspections.

City and County of Denver

Judy Steele

Deputy Director, Department of Excise and Licenses