CivStart launches startup accelerator for AI in government
Sixteen government technology startups this week began a 12-month accelerator program run by CivStart, a nonprofit focused on improving government operations. The nonprofit’s sixth annual program will focus on how the public sector can use artificial intelligence to solve its most pressing challenges, such as cybersecurity, directing residents to municipal services and managing infrastructure.
The new program, which launched Wednesday, is conducted through a partnership between the National League of Cities and the GovAI Coalition, a group of government leaders led by the City of San Jose, California. The program offers participants fundraising support, mentorship and opportunities to pitch their products to the public sector.
For the past few years, state and local governments have been brainstorming on how to responsibility use AI in their operations and digital services. Dozens have creating AI task forces and new agencies and roles to help regulate the rapidly advancing technology.
Civstart’s 2024 startup cohort includes Fordje, a platform designed to simplify city building codes and let municipal workers and project developers work faster. Also included is Sensay, which aims to use “replicas as a service,” or “RaaS,” AI-powered digital clones that act as employees that can share knowledge and manage tasks.
Some of the startups focus on fostering connections between governments and their constituents. PSI is a tool designed to help policymakers more quickly connect with their citizens. It claims to allow officials to communicate directly to thousands of citizens in under an hour. Another startup, Voting Buddy, helps aggregates voter data to connect politicians with constituents in their voting districts.
Others startups in the cohort specialize in making government offices more efficient through AI chatbots. Readyly AI claims to automate resident engagement to help governments improve internal staff efficiency and streamline back-office processes. The company says its chatbots can communicate in more than 200 languages. Enterprise Bot offers to streamline local government customer and employee support with an AI chatbot using only governments’ internal datasets.
Key Caliber uses machine learning to help governments strengthen their cybersecurity resources by using real-time visibility to direct cybersecurity teams on how to reduce risk and ensure resilience.
Last week, nine government technology startups from a previous cohort — specializing in tasks like diversity-equity-inclusion tracking, live traffic data and web design — graduated from a CivStart’s two-year accelerator program.
