Each year, billions of citizens visit our National Parks and Federal and State lands. Yet, most agencies still haven’t found a way to leverage technology to improve the effectiveness of limited staff in collecting entrance or usage fees and helping to manage their natural resources, or in making services available online and on mobile. Imagine reserving your campground from your phone or computer, purchasing parks entrance passes without having to wait in a long line or renewing your boat registration from the comfort of your couch. It means that citizens can spend more time enjoying these natural resources and less time with process and paperwork.
Accela is now in a great position to help manage these types of valuable resources with our acquisition of Kinsail. Their cloud-based solutions to enhance revenue collection and business processes will be rebranded as Accela Recreation and Resource Management, and include secure entrance passes, permits, licenses and applications for:
- Hunting & Fishing Permits
- Boating Permits & Licenses
- Climbing Permits
- OHV Permits & Licenses
- Snowmobile Permits & Licenses
- Special Use Permits
Today, customers including the Virginia Department of Forestry, the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, and the Massachusetts Executive Office for Energy and Environment Affairs are using these solutions to help manage online stores, bring permitting online and simplify the process for registering boats or Off-Highway Vehicles.
We’re thrilled to have Kinsail join the Accela team and to make a real difference in helping citizens engage in recreational activities and enabling agencies to generate revenue in a large, relatively untapped market with over 75 million permits issued annually and over 325 million estimated entrance fee transactions across the United States alone. Expanding our focus to also help agencies to manage recreation and resources is another wonderful opportunity for us to bridge the very different worlds of government and citizens, and in this case, improving government through civic engagement also has the dual benefit of enabling citizens to spend more time enjoying our parks and natural resources.
