• New York City is 200,000 building permits into a new policy of printing QR – quick response – codes on every one issued, which makes a link to the project's available to any passer-by with a smart-phone app for reading the ubiquitous symbols.
• The city is apparently the only jurisdiction so far to post a QR code on every permit to facilitate access to data that already was being compiled for projects and that are public records.
• Buildings Department Commissioner Robert LiMandri said he got the idea when watching a woman in a store scanning codes on merchandise so she could compare items, and his staff told him it "was not a very hard, technical lift to do" to put QR codes on permits.

From the article:

Building permits posted on New York City construction sites are sporting an intelligent look these days as older permits give way to new ones bearing QR codes—those stamp-like squares of dots and dashes.