# Accela

> Accela is a San Ramon, California-based government technology company whose cloud platform runs the unglamorous but essential machinery of public service: building permits, planning and zoning, business and professional licenses, inspections, environmental health, service requests, code enforcement, and public infrastructure workflows. Its customers are state and local agencies, while its indirect users are the residents, contractors, developers, and business owners who apply, pay, schedule, and track work through agency portals. Accela sells configurable, seat-based SaaS applications plus implementation, training, support, and managed services, differentiating itself with nearly three decades of government-specific workflow knowledge, a unified Azure-hosted platform, open APIs, and an ecosystem of plan-review, mapping, payment, and implementation partners.

- **Founded:** 1999
- **Headquarters:** San Ramon, United States
- **Founders:** Robert Ausherman (Founder; former president)
- **Team size:** Approximately 430 employees in the supplied company data; LinkedIn places Accela in the 201-500 employee range.
- **Products:** Accela Civic Platform, Building and Planning, Licensing and Regulatory Applications, Environmental Health and Fire Prevention, Service Request Management
- **Notable:** Serves more than 900 government agencies and supports services reaching more than 300 million citizens, according to Accela's current website., Won Microsoft US Government Partner of the Year for three consecutive years through 2022., Selected by Fast Company for a 2022 World Changing Ideas award and recognized by Inc. in its Best in Business SaaS category.

## Products & services

- **Accela Civic Platform** — A configurable, Azure-hosted SaaS foundation with workflow automation, GIS, mobile tools, public portals, reporting, open APIs, and integrations across government departments.
- **Building and Planning** — Applications for permit intake, concurrent plan review, zoning, fee collection, inspections, approvals, and applicant status tracking.
- **Licensing and Regulatory Applications** — Purpose-built workflows for business and occupational licensing, alcoholic beverage control, cannabis regulation, short-term rentals, and renewals or compliance.
- **Environmental Health and Fire Prevention** — Digital case, inspection, permitting, complaint, and compliance management for health departments and fire agencies.
- **Service Request Management** — Resident-facing intake plus routing, tracking, communications, and cross-department visibility for requests such as code or neighborhood issues.
- **ePermitHub** — Integrated digital plan room and document versioning capabilities that standardize plan submission and review, acquired by Accela in 2025.
- **Asset Management / Novotx Elements XS** — Geo-centric public infrastructure asset and work management spanning operations, maintenance, inspections, inventory, fleet, scheduling, budgeting, and lifecycle planning.
- **CivicAI and Civira AI** — Government-focused AI capabilities for intake, review and operations, plus browser-based agents that assist configuration, documentation, scripting, application building, and maintenance.
- **Professional, Managed, Support, and Training Services** — Implementation, configuration, system administration, optimization, technical support, and Accela University product training and certification.

## Achievements

- Serves more than 900 government agencies and supports services reaching more than 300 million citizens, according to Accela's current website.
- Won Microsoft US Government Partner of the Year for three consecutive years through 2022.
- Selected by Fast Company for a 2022 World Changing Ideas award and recognized by Inc. in its Best in Business SaaS category.
- Completed migration of more than 200 data-center customers to Azure-based SaaS in nine months in 2020.
- Merced County reported a 72% reduction in residential new-construction permit processing time, from 185 days to 52 days, after its platform rollout.
- Manatee County reported at least 80% of permits submitted online and roughly $250,000 in annual savings after retiring legacy systems and maintenance.
- Expanded into integrated electronic plan review with the 2025 acquisition of ePermitHub.
- Expanded from permitting into full public-infrastructure lifecycle management through the 2026 acquisition of Novotx.
- Acquired Civira AI in 2026 to assist configuration, documentation, scripting, and maintenance of civic systems.

## Latest updates

- **2026-07** — Acquired the Civira AI platform to add AI-assisted configuration, documentation, scripting, application building, and maintenance to Accela implementations.
- **2026-07** — Published a practical CivicAI framework for five uses of AI in permitting and planning, including rules review, conversational intake, pre-checks, process analysis, and data insights.
- **2026-06** — Released product updates across Civic Platform, Citizen Access, Public Portal, GIS security, APIs, exports, audit trails, accessibility, and navigation.
- **2026-02** — Acquired Novotx, adding Esri-based infrastructure asset and work management to the platform roadmap.
- **2026-01** — Published a Citrus County customer story covering a building department that handles roughly 20,000 permits and 80,000 inspections annually.
- **2025-10** — Published Merced County's unified-platform results, including 100% online submissions and payments and a 72% improvement in a headline residential permit metric.
- **2025-04** — Acquired ePermitHub to integrate digital plan room, document versioning, and future AI-driven plan-review automation into the Civic Platform.
- **2024-01** — Noam Reininger became CEO, succeeding Gary Kovacs and taking responsibility for strategy and growth.

## Links

- Website: https://www.accela.com/
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/accela-inc-/
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/AccelaSoftware
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/AccelaSoftware
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AccelaSoftware

---

Profile page: https://yespress.io/accela
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-08-10