The City of Burlington embraces AI in its digital transformation and boosts speed to innovation with Microsoft Copilot Studio

As the City of Burlington in Ontario, Canada, considers how to improve resident services, it is embracing the power of AI to innovate and increase accessibility with new digital solutions. To improve transparency and the customer experience, the City of Burlington turned to Microsoft to explore new possibilities with AI. Through this work, the City used low-code applications to streamline the building permit process and assistive AI to deploy a digital assistant that provides enhanced, 24/7 customer support on the City’s website to complement its customer service teams. The two initiatives are just the beginning for the City of Burlington and offer other municipalities a path to enter the era of AI.

Innovating with digital services to empower employees and improve resident experiences

The City of Burlington is a midsize municipality in the province of Ontario, Canada, that provides public services to its 200,000 residents. The City traditionally has focused on offering in-person engagement with customers seeking permits or inquiring about local services, but as Burlington continues to grow, the City decided to revamp its digital services. In 2023, the City of Burlington developed a digital business strategy aimed at addressing its growing community’s expectations about the speed and quality of service the City delivers.

In expanding its digital services, the City particularly wanted to expedite the building-permit process to address high housing demands and increase transparency for customers. Like many Canadian municipalities, the City of Burlington is trying to balance the need for additional housing with other demands. It was eager to explore how AI and low-code tools could reduce the administrative burden on employees and enhance the user experience. As the City considered options on its journey to become more digital friendly and responsive, its senior leadership reached out to Microsoft.

Facilitating staff collaboration and building-permit approvals in as little as five weeks

The City of Burlington’s initial efforts involved two use cases that embraced a low-code approach and harnessed AI with Microsoft Power Platform. To streamline the review of building permits and increase transparency, the City developed a system called MyFiles that would allow customers to track the status of applications. The low-code–powered tools have realized tangible gains in productivity and collaboration for City employees. With the MyFiles portal, the City of Burlington has cut the average permit approval process from 15 weeks to 5–7 weeks.

The streamlined process gives City reviewers more opportunities to substantively engage with customers, and the City plans to build on its success by introducing AI to evaluate more complex submissions. “Our staff and citizens do not have to worry about mundane tasks as much anymore,” says Chad MacDonald, Executive Director and Chief Information Officer, Digital Services, at City of Burlington. “Now they’re able to have rich, collaborative conversations about how to creatively solve problems, making for a much more fulfilling and rewarding work and customer experience.”

The building-permit approval process has also created new opportunities for collaboration among City employees. Previously, City departments tended to work separately, but the new digital services are fostering a broader spirit of engagement and streamlining the process for customers. “It really helped knock down those silos between groups and then offered more transparency on the status to residents,” says Kyle Conway, Manager of Creative and Digital Services at the City of Burlington. “They can see their applications go through each service and see where it’s hung up, get feedback, and quickly make alterations.”

“The progress we are making on simplifying planning approvals would not be possible without the combined efforts and enthusiasm of our staff in community planning and digital service. Together, we are trying things out, seeing what’s working, and looking to build on our initial successes. The implementation of the process improvements and MyFiles is a giant leap forward from where we were in terms of enhancing the customer experience for the pre-building approval process,” says Jamie Tellier, Director of Community Planning at the City of Burlington.

Deploying an AI-powered digital assistant within eight weeks

To offer residents a quick and accessible way to find answers to frequently asked questions, the City of Burlington conceptualized, developed, and deployed a custom copilot—an AI-powered digital assistant—called CoBy in only eight weeks. The City worked with Microsoft and Microsoft Solutions Partner MNP Digital, to learn how to build the copilot, and the City now updates and trains CoBy independently using Microsoft Copilot Studio, which helps users build customized AI assistants. CoBy answers queries related to City events and information on the City’s public website.

The copilot CoBy offers the City of Burlington unprecedented insights into residents’ top concerns, and the City continues to expand its capabilities, such as providing information and responses during emergencies and information on council meetings. By consolidating anonymized information on user queries, the City can also sense the pulse of the community. “We can take the real-time data CoBy provides and share the feedback with the frontline business departments. We’re able to show them which areas customers want to know about and make sure that we address them,” says MacDonald.

Offering a blueprint and encouragement for local innovation

The City of Burlington’s innovations have caught the attention of other Canadian municipalities looking to harness the power of AI. The City continues to train CoBy to better answer customer queries and incorporate new capabilities, and it also sees the potential to continue innovating with AI to improve the building permit process.

For local governments looking to improve digital services for residents, the City of Burlington has some simple advice: start now. “As pioneers in municipal AI application, we’re learning and growing incrementally—beginning with assistive AI to refine and improve our operations. Our goal is to meet the rising expectations for digital services and make meaningful enhancements to the way our residents are engaged and interact with city services, and we’re starting small, where we can, to make changes,” says MacDonald.