Government / CASE STUDY
Make agency knowledge easier to act on.
A staff knowledge assistant that brings approved guidance into one place, with sources, ownership, and a clear route for exceptions.
Time to answer
4–5 hr → 10 min
Less searching. Clearer answers. Accountable decisions.
- The people
- City, county, or agency operations staff
- The recurring task
- Find current guidance and identify who can resolve an exception.
- The working output
- A source-linked staff answer
01 / THE BUSINESS PROBLEM
Start with the work that slows people down.
A routine question can cross several inboxes before reaching the right policy owner. Shared drives contain similar documents, guidance changes, and experienced colleagues become the default help desk. A useful implementation must make the current source easier to find without turning a generated answer into an official decision.
A staff member searches folders, asks a colleague, and waits for confirmation that the guidance is current.
The staff member gets a source-linked starting point, sees the document owner, and routes exceptions to the responsible team.
A focused starting point. Start with one department, a defined question set, and approved guidance. Broader access follows the pilot's acceptance review.
02 / THE WORKFLOW
From connected sources to a reviewable output.
- Connected information
- Approved policies, Staff procedures, Service guidance
- Working output
- A source-linked staff answer
- Review and approval
- The answer helps locate guidance. Authorized staff interpret policy, handle exceptions, and make purchasing decisions.
03 / DELIVERY & EXECUTION
A useful system needs a delivery process.
Our delivery approach moves through four acceptance gates, from discovery and source preparation to evaluation and team handover.
- 01
Map the questions and the owners
Interview staff and policy owners, observe common searches, and select a bounded set of approved documents. Record who maintains each source and agree what the assistant must decline or escalate.
Delivery outputQuestion set, source register, ownership map, and baseline search times.
- 02
Connect approved knowledge
Design ingestion around the agency's identity and hosting requirements. Preserve document versions, permission boundaries, and source links; flag superseded or conflicting guidance before it enters the answer workflow.
Delivery outputA reviewable source pipeline and a working staff-answer prototype.
- 03
Test with the people doing the work
Run the agreed questions with a pilot group. Test out-of-date documents, unanswered questions, and restricted material. Policy owners review answers and record defects before expanding access.
Delivery outputEvaluation results, issue log, and a documented go/no-go decision.
- 04
Onboard staff and hand over operations
Use role-specific exercises to teach source checking and escalation. Name an operating owner, document refresh and incident procedures, and agree post-launch support before broader rollout.
Delivery outputStaff playbook, administrator runbook, training sessions, and support handover.
Security and review belong in the scope.
Controls to agree, implement, and verify for this workflow:
- Evaluate access using representative staff roles, including denied-access cases.
- Display source context and flag missing or conflicting guidance.
- Agree retention, hosting, administrative access, and incident responsibilities.
- Keep policy interpretation and consequential decisions with authorized staff.
04 / COMMUNICATION & ACCOUNTABILITY
Keep the people and the decisions connected.
The delivery cadence makes progress, blockers, and acceptance decisions visible to the people responsible for the outcome.
One accountable working group
An agency sponsor, policy owner, IT/security lead, and delivery lead agree decisions and ownership at kickoff.
A weekly working demonstration
Show actual pilot questions, open defects, source changes, and decisions needed. Maintain a shared decision and risk log.
A clear launch decision
Give the sponsor an acceptance summary, unresolved limitations, operating costs, and the proposed rollout scope to approve.
05 / EVALUATION FOR YOUR WORKFLOW
Define the finish line.
Then measure the whole task.
For a similar engagement, agree the task, sources, users, and acceptance standard before the pilot. Measure preparation, waiting, and human review separately so a faster draft does not hide extra work for the next person.
The criteria below describe how we would evaluate your workflow; they are separate from the project outcome above.
- Time to an accepted answer
- Compare the same staff questions before and during the pilot, including source verification time. Report the median and slower cases.
- Answer quality and escalation
- Have policy owners score source support and correctness. Track unanswered questions, inappropriate answers, and escalation rates.
- Staff adoption
- Measure repeat use and successful task completion, then use staff feedback to identify training or source-quality gaps.
A SIMILAR CHALLENGE IN YOUR ORGANIZATION?
Let’s make the next step concrete.
Bring the workflow, the people, and the systems involved. We’ll help define a useful starting point.