Permitting workflow automation, constituent communication, budget dashboards, public records management, and interdepartmental coordination — built around the way municipalities actually operate, not how a vendor wishes they did.
Where AI helps in local government
City and county governments run on documents, queues, and handoffs across departments that don't always talk to each other. Targeted AI shrinks the time between a resident's request and a real response.
Application intake, document review, and routing for building, zoning, and special-use permits — getting decisions to applicants faster while keeping the planners and inspectors who own those decisions firmly in the loop.
AI-assisted handling of resident inquiries, 311-style requests, and routine correspondence — drafted in your jurisdiction's voice, escalated to staff when judgment is required, and logged for transparency.
Real-time fiscal views for the city manager, mayor's office, and council — pulling from your finance system and tying spending back to the programs and services residents see in their neighborhood.
Tooling that helps your records team triage, search, and respond to public-records requests faster — while keeping every redaction, exemption, and disclosure decision auditable and within your statutory obligations.
Shared workflows for the work that crosses planning, public works, parks, and economic development — so a project doesn't lose two months in someone's inbox between approvals.
Decision-support tools for housing, neighborhood planning, and community development — grounded in city-planning practice, so the technology supports the equity and engagement work, not the other way around.
Ph.D. · M.C.P., City Planning
Systems design and
community development
Government & Municipal Vertical Lead
Dr. Bertin Ondja'a holds a Ph.D. and a Master of City Planning. His career sits at the intersection of how systems are designed and how communities are actually built — the kind of practitioner who can read a budget document, a zoning map, and a community engagement transcript with equal fluency.
He leads Kolo's government and municipal work because the technology is the easy part. The hard part is making sure AI deployed inside a city government actually serves residents — not just shaves headcount or turns a council meeting into a slide deck. Every engagement is shaped by that bar.
How we work with municipalities
We sit with department heads, frontline staff, and the city or county manager — and identify the queues, handoffs, and reporting work where residents are paying the price in wait time.
Custom workflow automation and dashboards designed for your existing systems, your council's transparency expectations, and your jurisdiction's legal environment.
Your staff — at every level — learns to use, audit, and adjust the tools we build. Public institutions stay accountable; capacity stays inside the city, not on a vendor's roadmap.
Every hour saved in coordination is an hour returned to the residents your departments serve.
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