How Homestead, Florida Is Modernizing Civic Services
Tyler Podcast Episode 145, Transcript
The Tyler Tech Podcast explores a wide range of complex, timely, and important issues facing communities and the public sector. Expect approachable tech talk mixed with insights from subject matter experts and a bit of fun. Each episode highlights the people, places, and technology making a difference. Give the podcast a listen today and subscribe.
Show Notes:
In this Tyler Tech Podcast episode, Kemarr Brown, deputy city manager for the city of Homestead, Florida, discusses how the city transformed service delivery to better support residents and businesses amid rapid growth. Recorded live at Tyler Connect 2026 in Las Vegas, the conversation highlights Homestead’s modernization journey — an effort recognized with a Tyler Excellence Award for its impact and results.
Like many local governments, Homestead faced challenges stemming from fragmented systems, manual processes, and limited visibility across departments. Permitting applications required in-person submissions or manual emails, code compliance officers spent significant time creating cases instead of working in the field, and online payments were unavailable for most services. These inefficiencies slowed service delivery and made it harder for the city to respond to rising demand.
Kemarr shares how Homestead addressed these challenges by implementing a unified, enterprise-wide digital platform, including Tyler’s Enterprise Permitting & Licensing and integrated payments solutions. By replacing disconnected systems with a single source of truth, the city created 24/7 digital access, real-time workflow visibility, and greater transparency for both staff and the community. Leaders can now track permitting timelines, identify bottlenecks, and use data — not intuition — to guide decisions and target limited resources where they matter most.
The conversation also explores the leadership and change-management side of digital transformation. Kemarr emphasizes the importance of executive alignment, clearly defining a “north star,” auditing existing processes before implementing new technology, and partnering closely with staff to design workflows that support compliance while making it easier to do business with the city.
This episode offers practical insights for city and county leaders looking to modernize service delivery, improve transparency, and scale for future growth. It reinforces how a strong digital foundation can help governments operate more efficiently while building trust with the communities they serve — advancing Tyler’s mission to help people, places, and communities thrive.
This episode also highlights the 2026 State CIO Priorities Playbook, designed to help government leaders turn strategy into action. The playbook provides practical insights, real-world examples, and actionable guidance across top priorities like AI, cybersecurity, modernization, accessibility, and digital services.
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Transcript:
Kemarr Brown: You needed to make services accessible to your residents, to the businesses in a way that they needed, not necessarily how traditional government operations and services were delivered.
Josh Henderson: From Tyler Technologies, this is the Tyler Tech Podcast. I’m your host, Josh Henderson. Today’s episode explores what it really takes for cities to modernize service delivery, balancing accessibility, efficiency, and accountability while keeping pace with rapid growth. Recorded live at Tyler Connect 2026 in Las Vegas, I’m joined by Kemarr Brown, deputy city manager for the city of Homestead, Florida, whose team was recognized this year with a Tyler Excellence Award.
Facing rising demand, fragmented systems, and manual processes that slowed everything from permitting to code compliance, Homestead set out to fundamentally rethink how it serves residents and businesses. Kumar shares how the city built a unified digital platform to deliver 24/7 access, improve transparency with real-time data, and empower both staff and the community with better tools. We’ll dig into what it takes to lead successful transformation from aligning executive vision and auditing processes to using data, not intuition, to drive decisions. If you’re thinking about modernization in your own organization, this is a conversation you won’t want to miss.
Let’s get into it.
Kemarr, thank you so much for being on the podcast today.
Kemarr Brown: Thank you so much for the invite, Josh. I appreciate that.
Josh Henderson: And it’s your first Connect, I hear.
Kemarr Brown: It is the first time I’ve been at Connect. I’ve been, I guess, circling the Tyler universe for close to maybe 15 years.
And we officially did the jump, and here I am.
Josh Henderson: Amazing. Well, it’s great to have you here. Let’s start where kind of where things began for you in the city of Homestead. What were some of the biggest challenges for the city? What were some of the biggest challenges the city was facing as a population as demand for services continue to grow for you all?
Kemarr Brown: So, I think most, if not all, cities are at a crossroad post COVID. Right? That you needed to make services accessible to your residents, to the businesses in a way that they need it, not necessarily how traditional government operations and services were delivered. So, the city of Homestead was not an exception to that rule, and layered with that, at least in the city of Homestead’s case, was a desire to really become an economic driver in South Dade. So, for us, if you layer the need for accessible services and the need to be more business friendly as an organization that folks will choose to do business in the city of Homestead, it means that we need to have our services respond to what the market called for.
For Homestead, in the case of permitting, we talk about online payments. We talk about code compliance. On our permitting side, applicants could not or someone who is looking to simply apply for a fence permit had to walk into city hall, or they had to email the permit application into city hall. So, a simple ability to submit an application was not there. On our code compliance side, one of the things that we oftentimes heard from our council or mayor and council was, hey. We are not seeing a lot of presence on the streets for code compliance. Well, as you dug into that, we found out that, well, what was happening is that it took 45 minutes for a code officer to open a case. Right?
So, what would happen is they would go out, they would take a notepad, and they would notate the violation and then have to come back into the office and create the cases through the system. So inefficient at its best.
And then payment was also disjointed. Folks would need to drive to city hall to make payments using our and of all the departments citywide, there were only two departments that had the ability to take online payments. So, there were some inefficiencies in our processes and the services that we really wanted to take a look at and then see how we can improve.
There were some inefficiencies in our processes and the services that we really wanted to take a look at and then see how we can improve.
Kemarr Brown
Deputy City Manager
City of Homestead, Florida
Josh Henderson: It sounds to me like there were, you know, a significant amount of fragmentation happening, some disconnected systems within the city. But how did that and departmental silos kind of affect both the customer experience and internal operations?
Kemarr Brown: So, the city manager and I, we come from different organizations when we joined the city of Homestead a couple of years ago, and we’ve contended with those issues, in other organizations. So, fortunately, the council selected a manager who brought me on his team to ultimately help to move the city into the direction where, again, businesses will choose the city of Homestead as the place that they want to do business with. We needed to, again, make things accessible and try at as at all possible in balancing compliance.
Because, of course, we’re a regulatory agency, but it needed to be easy for folks to do business with. So that is the continued weight that we are charged with balancing it as an organization. And for us, you know, the experience that we come with from other organizations allowed us to quickly assess the organization, figure out, okay.
These are the these are the tenets that we must solve for pretty quickly, and then the this is how we are able to set this up. Fortunately, the state of Florida, we all govern by the Florida Building Code. Right? So, although it’s different municipalities, the Florida Building Code is a universal code.
So knowing the Florida Building Code, knowing what’s required, and looking at best practices through different municipalities, you can walk in having an idea of the template that you need to implement, and then you layer how the city what are the specific nuances within the city and how we need to ensure that that is considered as well.
Josh Henderson: Okay. That’s great. And so, you know, you ultimately implemented a suite of Tyler solutions, Enterprise Permitting & Licensing (EP&L), Payments, Cashiering. What made an integrated enterprise wide platform so critical for the strategy in the city of Homestead?
Kemarr Brown: So, I come from a world where I ultimately as a senior leader within an organization, it’s important that we make decisions based on data. And not and not “I think,” “I feel,” “this is what one person said.” So, moving away from more of the emotional gut response and looking at truly what the data says and where the pain points exist.
I think there’s an incredible responsibility that organization, specifically municipal organization, has is that delivery of services. And the responsibility that is guided to that.
We would oftentimes receive complaints of, hey. This took so long. Right? So long is very lax definition.
This took so long to get through the permitting process. Why, it was a simple “X.”
This is the consistent response that we would get from our customer base, and that’s important feedback for us to hear. Now we get into let’s talk about the data. Now with implementing a product like EP&L, we now have the ability to track from application submission all the way to permit issuance, how long that is taking.
And that is you know, that’s the number. If the number is 84 days or 91 days for a permit, then the next question is, well, why was it so long for, you know, a fence permit? And then we lay then break it down further and say, how long was this permit with the city versus how long has this permit been with the applicant.
And being able to see that data and having transparency with that data was incredibly important because now we are able to whether it’s educate our customers on what they need to do to have a compliance application submitted, or we need to staff up staff, we need to reassert processes, we are able to target the limited resources that the city has to really problem solve with the data behind us.
Josh Henderson: That’s fantastic.
Kemarr Brown: We try.
Josh Henderson: Stay tuned. We’ll be right back with more of the Tyler Tech Podcast.
The National Association of State CIOs or NASCIO has released its top ten priorities for 2026, and they’re as relevant as ever. AI at number one for the first time, cybersecurity is holding strong, and the focus doesn’t stop there. Cloud, modernization, accessibility, data, and more are all top of mind for state CIOs.
Jade Champion: And Tyler has a companion to that list, the State CIO 2026 Priorities Playbook, to help agencies take the next step from strategy to execution.
Josh Henderson: You’ll find real case studies, honest insight into where progress stalls, and practical first steps across all ten priorities.
Jade Champion: It’s free, it’s actionable, and it’s ready for you right now in the show notes.
Josh Henderson: Go download the State CIO 2026 Priorities Playbook and start turning priorities into progress.
Jade Champion: Now let’s get back to the Tyler Tech Podcast.
Josh Henderson: Now flipping it to the resident side or, you know, the business side, the experience seemingly has fundamentally changed on that end as well. How has providing 24/7 digital access in a single unified platform improved transparency and engagement in that department?
Kemarr Brown: So first and foremost, the applicants are now able to keep us accountable. Right? Last Friday, I had a meeting with a resident, a contractor.
And that data that we talked about, he says, Kemarr, you see this permit? It took 91 days. And I immediately said, okay.
Now I’m intrigued because now you’re coming to me with data. And I called in our building official or director of development services, and I said, hey, guys. Talk to me why this would be the case. And it affords a level playing field conversation with our residents’ community.
And then number two, really, the reality of business is that it goes beyond nine-to-five. So, if a person is extremely busy and they can’t make it to city hall, we are still able to provide services to them well beyond the nine to five or eight to five operations of a city hall or municipality organization.
365 days, 24 hours, you now have the ability to submit your application. And above and beyond being able to submit in a portal, you can track through our workflow exactly where an application is, what has been said, and really providing visibility on both sides that you can act in a more expeditious way, and you become more self-sufficient. So that was really important to us as an organization.
Josh Henderson: That’s fantastic. I just want to look ahead a little bit more as we wrap up this conversation. So how do you see this new digital foundation sort of positioning Homestead to scale and adapt for future growth? It’s like it’s now you have the foundation. What does the future look like there?
Kemarr Brown: So, for us, we recently adopted in addition in parallel to EP&L, we recently adopted our strategic plan. And the city’s new tagline speaks to, “the future lives here.”
So, it’s very simple for us. We want to be the leaders and the forerunners in every single capacity that we can, and that means that we are willing to try new things ultimately to deliver better services to our customer community, whether that means partnering in Tyler’s case, partnering with DigEplan™ and being one of the first organizations to integrate seamlessly DigEplan and Tyler. It’s really important for us to be on the forefront of what’s coming next and how we can lead the conversation now that we are officially in the 21st century.
Josh Henderson: I love the future focus. So, for other cities that may be facing similar challenges or other cities that are similarly sized to the city of Homestead, what advice would you give them as they begin their digital transformation journey?
Kemarr Brown: So I think it’s extremely important, number one, to have an involved executive team or leader that understands and is able to articulate clearly the North Star because there’s going to be a lot of nuances, roadblocks, challenges, change management, people who have worked thirty years and they don’t want to change. And you need you need empathy as a leader, but you need to have a very clear North Star that can be articulated multiple times. I also think that you don’t necessarily need a huge team, but you need an efficient team that can work cross-functionally. And then I think most importantly is your ability to understand your current state processes. When we think about implementing a new system, really, what happens is if you go into the new system with the old processes, it’s going to highlight inefficiencies, and quite frankly, it’s not it’s not going to look good.
So, it’s the software will never solve the problem of bad processes. So, you need to really audit, spend the time asking the doers in the departments what their challenges are, and then go into an org go into an implementation looking at really how to solve these issues. One of the big things is staff had to send manual emails when an application was rejected.
So now you think, okay. How much time does that take? You identify. Now it becomes a requirement of, in this case, Tyler, to ensure that we automate all notifications, and that is an ingredient for success.
So, you also need to have very clear goals and objectives of what success means when you implement to gauge how is this going. Right? Are we really hitting the milestones and the goals that we’ve established early on.
Josh Henderson: And having a, you know, a future focused advocate for the city such as yourself is incredibly important.
It’s great to hear about the growth in in Homestead, and, yeah, can’t wait to hear more.
Kemarr Brown: Exactly. We’re excited. And, you know, I maybe in the next few years, Tyler Connect will be in Homestead. You never know.
Josh Henderson: Would love to see it.
Yeah. Thanks so much, Kemarr.
Kemarr Brown: Thank you, Josh.
Josh Henderson: As we heard today from Kemarr, modernizing city services is more than just implementing new technology. For the city of Homestead, Florida, it meant creating a more connected, transparent way of delivering services, giving residents and businesses 24/7 access, equipping staff with better tools, and using data to bring clarity and accountability to every step of the process.
Kemarr shared how moving to a unified platform helped eliminate inefficiencies, break down silos, and provide real-time visibility into everything from permitting timelines to code compliance.
The result is a more responsive organization, one that can adapt, scale, and better serve its community. If you’d like to learn more about the solutions discussed in this episode, check out the show notes for additional resources, and we’d love to hear your feedback. Fill out the listener survey linked in the notes or reach out anytime at podcast@tylertech.com. And be sure to subscribe, rate, and review the show so you never miss an episode. For Tyler Technologies, I’m Josh Henderson. Thanks for listening to the Tyler Tech Podcast.