I didn’t set out to build another chatbot.
I set out to fix a problem I kept seeing in local government: we make residents work far too hard to understand us. AI for local government needed to be built differently.
After nearly twenty years in Information Technology and Security, and seven years working with local government, I had become convinced of something that probably will not surprise anyone who has ever tried to find an answer on a city website.
Local governments publish an enormous amount of information. Ordinances. Meeting packets. Permit instructions. Department pages. Budgets. Policies. Forms. Public notices. The answer residents need is often already there.
The problem is that we tend to organize that information around the way government thinks—not around the way residents ask questions.
Take something as ordinary as Community Development. If you work inside city government, you probably know exactly what that means. But what does “community development” mean to the person who just wants to know whether they need a permit for a fence? Or whether they can open a business? Or what is being built down the street?
Residents do not arrive at a city website thinking in departments, organizational charts, or code sections.
They arrive with questions.
The information was already there. The problem was helping people find it, understand it, and act on it.
That became the starting point for Curia.IQ
A website full of information is not the same as access to information.
As I looked across local government websites, I was surprised by how often site search was missing, ineffective, or simply failed to surface information I knew was there.
That creates a predictable cycle. A resident cannot find an answer, so they call or email staff. A staff member stops what they are doing to answer a question that may already be answered somewhere online. Or the resident files a records request because locating the public information is harder than requesting it again.
I did not think the answer was simply publishing more pages. Cities already have plenty of content. The opportunity was to build a better layer between that information and the people trying to use it.
Local governments across the country are beginning to explore how artificial intelligence can improve service delivery, civic engagement, and access to information, a shift also being supported by the National League of Cities’ AI in Action initiative .
AI for local Government:
Generative AI looked like the obvious answer.Then I started looking closely at the generative AI products being offered to local governments.
I found platforms that could cost tens of thousands of dollars, while the resident experience still too often felt incomplete: generic responses, weak retrieval, stale information, or answers that did not make the city's own source material easy to verify.
The technology had changed. The experience had not changed enough.
I kept coming back to one question:
Not a chatbot for the sake of having a chatbot. Not another search box that returns ten links. A practical AI layer for local government that begins with approved information and turns it into a clear, useful answer.
Start with the question. Build around the outcome.
Curia.IQ grew from a simple idea: make the information local governments already publish dramatically more useful to the people they serve—and make each useful interaction work harder for the organization too.
Answer the resident’s question.
Give people a clear, plain-language answer grounded in approved municipal information instead of sending them through another maze of pages and links.
Keep the connection—with permission.
When a jurisdiction enables engagement tools, a helpful interaction can become an opportunity for a resident to opt in to future text or email communication. Consent comes first.
Reduce repetitive requests.
Make public information easier to discover and understand so routine questions—and avoidable open-records requests for information already available—do not always have to become staff work.
Give staff time back.
Let employees spend more of their day solving problems, serving residents, and doing the work that requires a person—not repeatedly pointing people to information the city has already published.
I believe local government works best when residents can understand it. Technology should make that easier—not add another layer residents have to figure out.
That is why I built Curia.IQ. Not to add more technology to local government, but to make the information local governments already have considerably more useful to the people they serve.
Curia.IQ started with a simple belief: residents should be able to ask their local government a question the same way they would ask another person—and get an answer they can actually understand.
See what this looks like in practice.
Explore how Curia.IQ turns approved local government information into grounded answers for residents—or show us your website and the questions your staff hears every day.