Opening a restaurant in New York City requires patience, persistence, and a good pair of walking shoes — for the unavoidable treks between city agencies. One day, a working computer and Internet access may be all that is needed.

A technology plan to be released today by the Bloomberg administration calls for a variety of changes to government technology, and lays the groundwork for would-be restaurant owners to get access to and file permit applications online.

“If you want to open a restaurant in New York, it’s conceivable that you may actually have to go to like as many as 20 or 30 different agencies to get different permits to do things,” the commissioner of the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications, Paul Cosgrave, said yesterday. “People shouldn’t have to wait in line to get services from the government.”

An assistant commissioner, Lisa Lugo, said: “It’s amazing anyone can open a business here, quite frankly.”

Technology to streamline the restaurant permitting process likely won’t be finished by the end of Mayor Bloomberg’s term, but Mr. Cosgrave said he wants to have enough implemented so the effort can’t be reversed.

The technology plan also calls for the city’s 311 call line to be expanded to the Internet so New Yorkers could track the status of their service requests online and send in photographs of potholes that need to be filled or video footage of crimes.

Mr. Cosgrave said there are discussions under way to create online identities for residents who interact with the city by using its services, seeking permits, or by sending a child to public school.

The idea, he said, is for the city to be able to identify residents much in the same way a bank knows its customers by their bank card pin number. He said the city is still far from having the details worked out, but a resident could potentially log on to a city Web site and see the taxes they owe as a business owner, the inspections required for their shop, and the permits they need to file. It’s unclear if city officials also would be able to get access to the files. Mr. Cosgrave said the rules “obviously would have to be defined because privacy is tantamount here.”

A technology advocate who ran for public advocate in 2005, Andrew Rasiej, said the city’s plans are long overdue. When it comes to technology, he said New York is stuck in the 20th century and is struggling to move forward.

Most subways and buses don’t let riders know when they are going to arrive, and there are sections of the city where small businesses can’t get broadband access “and therefore can’t participate in the global economy,” he said.

While 311 is a great service, “when it was started it was like New York City dragging itself into 1992,” he said. “There is no reason why the screen that the 311 operator sees shouldn’t be accessible to the average New Yorker.”

Ms. Lugo said that at its core, the technology plan is designed to bring the city up to speed with many of its residents, whose lives are linked daily with technology. “Everyone is so used to the Facebooks and the text messaging and the cell phones and the videos everywhere,” she said. “This plan is trying to drive the government into the 21st century, so that we can interact with people that way.”