North SGV News

Dear Customers,

Great news! Today, the Department of Building Inspection (DBI) launched our new SF.gov website! This is a big step forward for our department and our efforts to improve the service we provide to you.

Here’s a link to the new homepage: sf.gov/dbi. 

As you know, DBI’s website is the gateway to our services and is used by as many as 90% of our customers before contacting us. From applying for permits to tracking complaints to scheduling an inspection and requesting records, our website is the starting point and primary information source for you and the public at large.

And we can all agree that the old site was outdated and needed a major refresh.

Over the past 18 months, our communications team and our partners at Digital Services re-imagined and re-designed the website to achieve three primary functions: 

• Create self-service avenues for customers as they begin their permit journey.
• Educate customers on the process to establish expectations for what will happen next. 
• Meet legal requirements for mandated content.

The team rewrote 210 webpages, moved more than 1,000 pages to the new site, and archived nearly 3,000 old pages that are no longer needed. More than two dozen DBI staffers contributed their time and expertise to review, advise, and improve draft pages to ensure our work, requirements and processes were properly represented.

The new webpages will live on the City’s SF.gov platform but can still be accessed by going to SFDBI.org – the old pages will automatically redirect to the new pages. We’ve also archived the old website as it is today.  So your bookmarks will still work and you can still go back and look at the retired pages and older documents as needed.

We hope you find the new website clear, concise, accurate, and, most of all, useful. As always, we welcome your feedback on the new pages or other issues at dbi.communications@sfgov.org.

Thank you for your ongoing support and partnership 

Original source can be found here.