As anyone who has tried to make an improvement to their property knows, a government agency must sign off on — i.e., permit — many things that citizens might want to do. Often, this involves delays due to the application sitting on some bureaucrat’s desk, only to have that bureaucrat tack on a bunch of requirements, further delaying the process and making the project more expensive. 

On the federal level, at least, the government finally sees the problem and is starting to address it. On July 23, President Donald Trump issued an executive order directing his agencies to take steps to expedite permitting technological or artificial intelligence facilities. Ordering agencies to create expedited or simplified permitting processes has been a consistent theme in this second Trump administration.