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Committee updates five-year tech plan and flags AI pilots with CivicPlus
Summary
The Municipal Technology Committee reviewed an updated five-year technology strategy highlighting recent infrastructure upgrades, potential AI ‘easy wins’ (chatbots, photo analysis in SeeClickFix, improved search) and recommended stakeholder outreach to the Select Board and department heads before piloting tools.
The Municipal Technology Committee reviewed an updated five-year strategic technology plan and discussed low-risk AI pilots and website enhancements that could improve service access and staff efficiency.
The presenter summarized recent accomplishments — website modernization, public Wi‑Fi, hybrid meeting systems and cloud migrations — and highlighted new sections added to the plan on practical AI opportunities and an updated roadmap through 2026. “This is our tech strategy,” the presenter said when opening the review.
Members discussed practical pilots such as CivicPlus’s new AI agent (chatbot) and the platform’s photo-analysis enhancements for SeeClickFix, which could reduce misclassified requests. The presenter suggested contacting CivicPlus to confirm which AI features are turned on under the town’s contract and to demo capabilities such as natural-language question-and-answer and plain-language summaries of public documents.
Committee members recommended a two-part outreach: (1) confirm contract terms and what the town already pays for, and (2) brief key stakeholders — the Select Board, department heads and residents — to secure buy-in and to surface departmental needs and constraints. The group also discussed measuring impact through KPIs and bundling forthcoming 2025 survey results with the strategy update for a public-facing article.
The committee agreed to circulate a revised draft (version 6.1) incorporating member feedback, to share the document with department heads prior to publication, and to coordinate a brief with the Select Board before any public article is posted.
