Why Honolulu’s $7.3M Permit System Upgrade Became a Disaster

In August, Honolulu's Department of Planning and Permitting (DPP) replaced its 28‑year‑old POSSE system with the new $7.3 million HNL Build platform, a SaaS‑style, template‑based solution built by Salesforce, Clariti and Speridian.

Within weeks the new system was described by staff as a “disaster upgrade” and “complete failure”, with many tasks that previously took minutes now taking hours, loss of edit‑tracking, missing data entry points, and the ability to bypass approval steps.

An anonymous survey of over 150 employees gave the lowest possible rating (1/5) to the new tool; most respondents said the change was fundamentally wrong and called for a return to the old system.

Engineers complained that HNL Build lacked the detailed audit trails of POSSE, making it impossible to view historical versions of permits, and that the “system limitation” excuse was repeatedly used without real fixes.

Project leaders argued the rollout was a normal “pain‑point” of large‑scale digital transformation, promising AI‑driven review features in the future, but staff remained unconvinced that additional training would solve the underlying architectural flaws.

Tasks now take hours instead of minutes

One‑click data lookup disappeared

No edit‑tracking or version history

Some approval flows can be skipped