AI-Ready City Hall and a New Trust Agenda

Mike Johnston leads Denver with a blend of educatorʼs instinct and reformerʼs impatience. A former high school teacher and school founder who later served in the Colorado Senate and ran a philanthropic fund, he won the 2023 mayoral race on promises to tackle homelessness, public safety, and downtown recovery and is now adding a fourth pillar: rebuilding trust in government through smarter, visible use of AI.

That vision was on display at Denverʼs DenAI Summit, where Johnston told attendees he wants city services to feel as intuitive as ordering through DoorDash. From noise complaints and construction permits to pothole repairs, he argues that AI can help the city respond more efficiently, route requests more intelligently, and reduce the daily friction that shapes how residents perceive their government.

The summit itself is designed as a trust lab. City staff, community groups, unions, and startups gather in the same room to explore where AI can genuinely enhance service and where it risks exacerbating bias, opacity, or job anxiety. This approach ensures that pilots begin with human concerns, not just new tools.

To push this work beyond events, Johnston elevated veteran technologist Suma Nallapati to Chief Artificial Intelligence and Information Officer, charged with scaling AI across departments with clear guardrails. Denver already uses “Sunny,ˮ an AI 311 chatbot that answers questions in multiple languages, AI tools to speed up permitting and internal IT support, and more than 100 AI-enabled license plate cameras.

All of this is happening under budget pressure, with layoffs, vacant positions left unfilled, and the human-staffed 311 line closing earlier, while Sunny takes over after hours. That tension fuels both hope and unease: some fear AI will quietly hollow out public institutions, while Johnston and Nallapati insist it should augment workers, not replace them, and draw lines against using it for decisions like sentencing or parole. They bet that if residents can see AI making services faster, more consistent, and more transparent, without erasing the human accountability behind them, Denver can turn todayʼs skepticism into a new kind of civic trust where a smart government can still be democratic, humane, and locally accountable.

Wishing all our readers a Happy New Year!

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