Story 7c: City Permit Office
Vertical: Civic / Institutional
Priority: 🔴 Flagship — Write First
The People
- Maria, a city clerk processing building permits
- Contractors submitting permit applications
- Inspectors verifying completed work
- City council members reviewing approval patterns
- An auditor investigating a corruption complaint
The Old Way
- Applications submitted on paper or clunky web forms
- Contractor licenses verified by manual lookup
- Approvals tracked in a legacy database
- Inspections scheduled by phone, results filed in folders
- Audits require pulling boxes from storage
The Breaking Point
- A contractor claims approval they never received
- An inspector is accused of favoritism
- The database crashes, losing three months of records
- An audit takes six months because records are scattered
- Public trust erodes after a permit scandal
The New Pattern
- Contractors submit applications with verifiable credentials attached
- Each approval is a signed attestation by the responsible clerk
- Inspection results are attested by the inspector’s identifier
- Every action is independently verifiable without central access
- Auditors reconstruct the entire process from public records
What Changed
- Maria processes permits; the system proves her work
- Contractors can prove their approvals independently
- Inspectors’ records are tamper-evident
- Audits take hours, not months
- Corruption becomes detectable, not just suspected
This pattern is enabled by KERI.
TODO: Write full narrative