Work Smarter, Serve Better: How CivicPlus Intelligence Supports Local Government Teams

Local governments are being asked to do more with less. Resident expectations around transparency, accessibility, and responsiveness keep growing, even as budgets tighten and staffing shortages persist. To meet the changing needs of residents, government staff need better ways to eliminate repetitive tasks and time-consuming work without sacrificing quality and accuracy.

Emerging capabilities in CivicPlus Intelligence are starting to deliver concrete solutions to long-standing workflow challenges, including turning agenda bullets into usable minutes, auditing municipal website content for AEO and SEO improvements, and improving service request routing. These features provide practical levers for local government staff to reduce manual work and surface the right information for residents.

Communities are at different stages of artificial intelligence readiness. A 2024 survey by the International City/County Management Association found that 77% of local government staff believe a lack of awareness and understanding are their most significant barriers to successfully using AI. And while 53% of city and county IT executives told the Public Technology Institute that they’re working on developing AI governance policies and frameworks, another 38% said their staff are not prepared to safely and productively use these tools.

CivicPlus is committed to addressing this uncertainty and turning momentum into practical solutions. CivicPlus Intelligence is the combination of emerging technologies, including AI, and our deep expertise in local government. It provides new ways to solve real challenges for local government leaders and meet the evolving needs and expectations of residents.

With CivicPlus Intelligence, staff can instantly generate and summarize information with clarity and confidence, streamline complex workflows to improve both efficiency and resident service, and uncover insights that turn raw data into meaningful, actionable guidance.

The Challenge: More Work, Less Time, Higher Expectations

Across departments, municipalities of all sizes face many of the same barriers:

1. Staff lose time, efficiency, and energy to manual writing, editing, and information summaries

From public updates to agenda items to meeting minutes, public servants are constantly drafting and revising documents. Key details often live inside dense reports or long documents. Turning these into clear, public-facing communication takes time and sustained focus. Without purpose-built tools, messages can unintentionally exclude non-English speakers and residents with disabilities.

2. Manual processes create inefficiencies for staff and frustration for residents

Growing volumes of reports, meeting media, service requests, and messages overwhelm manual processes that depend on people to find and sort what matters. That manual triage consumes staff time, delays responses, and leaves residents waiting for information or support.

3. Data abounds, but next steps are unclear

Many teams feel data-rich but information-poor. Even when detailed spreadsheets and reports are plentiful, actionable guidance may be scarce. Departments may lack the specialized data analysis capabilities and tools for turning their data into insights for strategic decision-making.

CivicPlus Intelligence Pillars

CivicPlus Intelligence is not “AI for AI’s sake.” It is built to support the genuine needs of local governments. It comes to life across three pillars:

• Generate, Translate, and Summarize: Draft and revise content faster, simplify technical language for residents, adjust tone and readability, translate materials, and break long documents into key takeaways.
• Intelligent Workflows: Reduce manual handoffs and remove bottlenecks across intake, routing, review, and publishing processes, so work moves forward more consistently and with fewer delays.
• Insights and Recommendations: Surface trends, risks, and opportunities from the information you already have and translate them into next steps that support better planning and decision-making.

These capabilities are embedded across the Civic Impact Platform. They support everything from communications to meetings to records to service delivery.

The Power of AI in Government: Tailored Benefits for Every Department and Role

CivicPlus Intelligence delivers value across departments because tools are built around real municipal work, not one-size-fits-all business solutions. The impact looks different depending on the roles and responsibilities of each team. For example:

• Public Information Officers and Communication Directors can:
  • Draft and refine public-facing messages faster, without sacrificing accuracy or readability.
  • Simplify complex updates with clear, resident-friendly language (and translations when necessary).
  • Identify what’s resonating with the community using analytics and sentiment insights.
• Municipal Clerks can:
  • Draft agenda items, minutes, and supporting summaries more quickly and easily.
  • Pull key takeaways from long documents to provide actionable insights.
  • Support stronger transparency and consistency with clearer, more accessible documents.
• Administrators can:
  • Reduce cross-department friction by modernizing how staff create, review, and act on information.
  • Improve the resident experience through faster answers, clearer communication, and better self-service.
  • Strengthen accountability with better insights and more consistent processes.

These Tools, Powered by CivicPlus Intelligence, Are Already Empowering Local Governments

CivicPlus Intelligence is already helping local government teams work faster and smarter to better serve their residents. Here are a few examples across the Civic Impact Platform:

• CivicPlus Agent: An agent purpose-built for the Civic Impact Platform to provide high-quality answers through native integrations with our products.
• CivicPlus Athena: An agent within the CivicPlus Staff Center, providing a single hub to instantly find answers, confidently complete actions, and streamline daily workflows across CivicPlus products.
• AI Content Advisor in Municipal Websites: An AI-driven auditing and reporting tool that automatically reviews Municipal Websites content and provides guidance on AEO (Answer Engine Optimization) and SEO (Search Engine Optimization) improvements and content quality issues.
• AI Editing Assistant in Municipal Websites: An AI-powered assistant to quickly create content, improve writing, and summarize information, all without leaving the editor
• AI Editing Assistant in Agenda and Meeting Management: An AI-powered assistant to draft, polish, and format agenda items and minutes in real time, right within your documentation workflow.
• AI-Improved Category Search and Photo Analysis in SeeClickFix 311 CRM: AI tools analyze photo content and suggest the correct service request category, simplifying reporting for residents and reducing misclassified requests for staff.

Experience CivicPlus Intelligence Today

Local government teams are balancing rising expectations with limited resources. CivicPlus Intelligence helps make that workload more manageable by reducing repetitive steps, building smart workflows, and surfacing the information staff need to act quickly. Reach out today to learn how CivicPlus can support your agency.