Innovation debt is when an organization (like a government or businesses) experiences an uptick in costs and inefficiency as a result of not embracing more modern technology. For local governments in general, a reliance on antiquated, paper-based workflows has resulted in seriously costly and slow-moving workflows for decades. This has resulted in millions of tax dollars spent unnecessarily and thousands of man hours at even the local level since technology could’ve been used to automate tasks and speed up project timelines.