Industry solution

Government & Public Sector

Run city services as one system, from a resident's request to a repaired streetlight

Burdenoff products designed to work together across resident requests, permits, public assets, open data and emergency operations.

Products
8
Challenges
6
Concepts
15
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A river city at dusk with a crew repairing a streetlight and a resident using a phone near the water.
GovCitizenHub(opens GovCitizenHub in a new tab)AssetHandler(opens AssetHandler in a new tab)Botlit(opens Botlit in a new tab)FluidGrids(opens FluidGrids in a new tab)SemanticFed(opens SemanticFed in a new tab)BigConsole(opens BigConsole in a new tab)EcoImpactHub(opens EcoImpactHub in a new tab)IntelWatchtower(opens IntelWatchtower in a new tab)

The problem

Why public services are hard to run as one system

Residents see one government, but their requests pass through many disconnected systems. Permits stall, duplicate reports waste crew trips, data releases wait on manual privacy checks, and emergencies run on whiteboards.

A mid-sized city delivers a long list of services through many departments, and each department bought its own system at a different time: a permitting package, a work-order tool, a utility billing platform, a records database, a website maintained by committee. Residents do not see departments. They see one government, and they judge it by whether the streetlight is fixed, the permit is issued, and someone can tell them where their request stands.

Staffing is tight and budgets are set a year ahead, so agencies absorb rising demand with the same headcount. Open records laws, transparency commitments and audits mean every decision must be explainable long after it was made, and residents' personal data has to be protected even as more data is published. Language access and accessibility expectations apply to every channel, not just the counter.

Then come the days that do not follow the plan: a storm, a flood, a water main break. The same fragmented systems that slow a permit on an ordinary Tuesday leave an emergency operations center assembling its picture from phone calls and whiteboards. The problem is rarely a shortage of software. It is that the software does not share one record.

Who this is for

  • City or county manager

    One accountable view of service delivery across departments, and answers for council that come from the live record rather than a weekly spreadsheet.

  • Chief information or data officer

    Shared sign-on, access control and audit across departments, and data releases that never expose a resident's personal details.

  • 311 and resident services director

    Fewer repeat status calls, residents served in their own language, and every report tracked to a confirmed resolution.

  • Permitting and licensing manager

    Plan reviews and inspections that keep moving, applicants who know what is missing, and a backlog figure nobody has to rebuild.

  • Public works director

    One work order per problem, asset history in the crew's hands, and repair-or-replace decisions grounded in the service record.

  • Emergency management coordinator

    A shared, current picture of gauges, reports, closures and crews during a flood or storm, and a clean handover between shifts.

A day in the life

The story behind the solution

A week in Calder Falls: from a fence permit to a flood night

Nadia Haddad has been deputy city manager for operations in Calder Falls for three years. Her portfolio covers the 311 center, permitting, public works, the sustainability office and, when the river rises, the emergency operations center. This is one week in late October: a council work session on Thursday, a storm forecast for Friday, and the everyday pressure of a city that residents judge by whether the light on their block works.

  1. Monday, 7:45 a.m.

    The phones ring before the doors open

    Before the counter opens, 311 supervisor Keisha Grant already has callers on hold, most asking the same thing: where is my application? One resident, Mrs. Tran, has called three departments about a fence permit through an interpreter line, and each one transferred her. Nadia listens to the recording and writes one line in her notebook: we do not have a front door, we have eleven side entrances.

    How this is solved: One front door for residents, in their own language

  2. Monday, 10:30 a.m.

    Nineteen days on a bakery's permit

    Samir Aziz wants to open a bakery on Front Street. His tenant-improvement permit is nineteen days past its review target because a request for a revised plumbing sheet went to an old email address, and nobody saw the clock. Permit manager Luis Ortega books inspections in a shared calendar and rebuilds the backlog report every Friday. Councilmember Reyes wants backlog numbers by Thursday.

    How this is solved: Permit reviews and inspections that keep moving

  3. Tuesday, 6:10 a.m.

    Fourteen reports, one streetlight

    The streetlight at Riverside Avenue and 3rd Street has been dark for four nights. Fourteen residents reported it through the app, by email and through a council office. Public works superintendent Dwayne Parker's crew starts the day with a printed list that has three entries for the same pole, no asset number, and no sign that its photocell was already replaced twice this year.

    How this is solved: From a resident's report to a fixed streetlight

  4. Wednesday, 2:00 p.m.

    A dataset nobody wants to publish

    A local reporter asks for 311 response times by neighborhood. Data officer Mei Lin Zhao can find the numbers, but they sit in four systems with four spellings of every district. Last spring a spreadsheet posted to the open data page carried complainants' phone numbers in a hidden column, and since then every release has waited weeks on a manual review.

    How this is solved: Open data and public records without exposing residents

  5. Thursday, 6:00 p.m.

    Climate progress from a stack of utility bills

    At the work session, council asks how the climate action plan is tracking. Sustainability manager Anika Sharma assembled the figure by hand from fuel-card exports and utility bills. She cannot say which buildings drive the electricity total, whether the LED streetlight conversion shows up yet, or which emission factor was used last year.

    How this is solved: Climate action progress that council can trust

  6. Friday, 11:20 p.m.

    The river rises at night

    Rain has fallen all day. At 11:20 p.m. the Mill Creek gauge crosses flood stage and emergency manager Tom Brennan activates the emergency operations center. Flooding reports arrive from Lower Town, Pump Station 4 raises a high-water alarm, the public works duty officer tracks sandbag crews on a whiteboard, and the police liaison keeps asking which underpasses are closed.

    How this is solved: One current picture for the emergency operations center

None of these moments is unusual for a city. What makes them hard is that each lives in a different system, owned by a different department, with a resident waiting on the other side. The challenges below show how Burdenoff products are designed to work together so the resident's request, the crew's work order, the data release and the emergency picture share one record.

Challenges and how they are solved

6 problems, several products, one connected answer

Each challenge shows the problem as it happens, how the products are designed to hand work to each other, and the concepts that illustrate it. Share any challenge on its own.

Challenge 1 of 6

One front door for residents, in their own language

GovCitizenHub(opens GovCitizenHub in a new tab)Botlit(opens Botlit in a new tab)

The problem

A resident who needs a fence permit, a bulk-item pickup or a water-bill adjustment has to guess which department owns it. They call 311, get transferred, and call again a week later to ask where the application stands. Residents who speak a language other than English wait for an interpreter line or give up. 311 agents spend much of the day answering the same status questions by checking three back-office systems, and service information on the city website drifts out of date because each department maintains its own pages.

What it costs

Repeat calls crowd out residents with urgent needs, first attempts fail on missing documents, and trust erodes when nobody can say where a request stands.

How the products work together

GovCitizenHub publishes every service once in a searchable catalog, with eligibility, required documents, fees and turnaround stated up front, and gives each request a reference and a status timeline. Botlit is designed to sit in front of it as a resident services assistant on the city website and messaging channels: it answers from the published service pages and ordinance summaries, cites the passages it used, replies in the language the resident writes in, and says plainly when it has no answer before handing the conversation to 311 staff. When a resident asks about an existing request, the Botlit agent is designed to make a read-only call to GovCitizenHub for the live status; when a new request is needed, it links the resident to the right GovCitizenHub form rather than taking the application in chat.

The outcome it is designed for

Residents find the right service and see where their request stands without a phone call, and 311 staff spend their time on the conversations that need a person.

The concepts behind it

Challenge 2 of 6

Permit reviews and inspections that keep moving

GovCitizenHub(opens GovCitizenHub in a new tab)FluidGrids(opens FluidGrids in a new tab)BigConsole(opens BigConsole in a new tab)

The problem

Permit reviews stall in the gaps between people. A correction request goes out by email with no clock attached, so a review can sit past its target while the applicant waits for a message that never reached them. Inspection requests arrive by phone and email and are penciled into a shared calendar, so inspectors cross the city more than once in a morning and contractors wait on site without a time window. The backlog report is rebuilt by hand each week, and when council asks how long a commercial permit takes, the answer depends on which spreadsheet is open.

What it costs

Every stalled permit is a storefront that opens late, a contractor on hold, and a council question without a confident answer.

How the products work together

GovCitizenHub holds each application with its documents, case notes and service-level clock in one casework queue, so a permit waiting on information shows its age next to its reviewer. FluidGrids is designed to sweep those records on a schedule: it reminds applicants who owe documents, flags reviews nearing their target and, when plan review is approved, requests the first field inspection in GovCitizenHub, which is designed to place it on an inspector's day board by district, with a time window the applicant sees, and to post each result back to the permit. FluidGrids then writes queue and inspection figures into a BigConsole data sink, so the permit backlog console the director and council use stays current, and every figure drills down to the applications behind it.

The outcome it is designed for

Permit staff see a stalled case before the applicant calls, inspections are planned by district with time windows applicants can see, and council gets backlog figures drawn from the live record.

The concepts behind it

Challenge 3 of 6

From a resident's report to a fixed streetlight

GovCitizenHub(opens GovCitizenHub in a new tab)FluidGrids(opens FluidGrids in a new tab)AssetHandler(opens AssetHandler in a new tab)

The problem

A single broken asset produces a pile of tickets. Residents report the same dark streetlight, pothole or leaking hydrant through the app, by phone, by email and through council offices, and each channel creates its own record. Crews receive lists sorted by ticket rather than by asset, so two trucks can be sent to one problem while another waits. Repair history lives in paper files and a technician's memory, so a part that keeps failing gets replaced again instead of questioned. When the repair is done, most reporters never hear back, and some report it again.

What it costs

Crews waste trips on duplicates, repeat failures hide in paper records, and residents conclude that reporting a problem does nothing.

How the products work together

GovCitizenHub takes the report with a location pin and photos, gives the resident a tracking reference, routes it to Public Works and links duplicates for the same pole. FluidGrids is designed to receive each new report by webhook, match it to the asset in AssetHandler with a versioned rule, and open a work order, or attach it to the one already open. AssetHandler assigns the crew, keeps the pole's service history and is designed to flag repeat failures for a repair-or-replace review. GovCitizenHub lists public facilities for residents, and AssetHandler holds their maintenance and cost history. When the crew closes the work order, AssetHandler is designed to pass the completed status back so GovCitizenHub resolves every linked report and notifies each resident who filed one.

The outcome it is designed for

One work order per problem, crews that arrive knowing the asset's history, and residents who hear back when the repair is done.

The concepts behind it

Challenge 4 of 6

Open data and public records without exposing residents

SemanticFed(opens SemanticFed in a new tab)FluidGrids(opens FluidGrids in a new tab)GovCitizenHub(opens GovCitizenHub in a new tab)BigConsole(opens BigConsole in a new tab)

The problem

Reporters, researchers and residents ask for data the city already holds: response times, inspection results, code enforcement cases. The numbers sit in separate departmental systems, each export defines districts and dates differently, and assembling one table takes days. Every release has to be checked by hand for names, phone numbers, addresses and free-text notes, because one missed column can put a resident's personal details on a public page. Formal records requests queue behind the same few people, each with a response deadline.

What it costs

Transparency slows to a crawl, records requests pile up, and a single mistake can put a resident's personal details in public view.

How the products work together

SemanticFed is designed to query request, permit, work-order and legacy case data where it lives, through one governed semantic model, so response time and district mean the same thing in every source. For each release it surfaces columns that look like personal data, such as names, phone numbers and addresses, as inactive deny or mask proposals, and is designed to release nothing until a named person approves them. FluidGrids can then publish the approved release to GovCitizenHub's open data catalog as a new versioned, licensed dataset, and push it into a BigConsole data sink, so the transparency console embedded on the city's site refreshes with it. Records requests are designed to run as GovCitizenHub cases with their own response clock, with SemanticFed preparing the masked extract for the officer to review.

The outcome it is designed for

Datasets reach the public on a steady cadence, every release has a named approver and a record, and residents' personal details stay out of public files.

The concepts behind it

Challenge 5 of 6

Climate action progress that council can trust

EcoImpactHub(opens EcoImpactHub in a new tab)FluidGrids(opens FluidGrids in a new tab)AssetHandler(opens AssetHandler in a new tab)BigConsole(opens BigConsole in a new tab)

The problem

Council adopted a climate action plan with targets for municipal operations, but the evidence behind each progress report is scattered: fleet fuel-card exports, utility bills for many facility accounts and a streetlight inventory kept by another department. Each quarter the figure is rebuilt by hand in a spreadsheet, emission factors are copied from wherever they were found last time, and nobody can trace a total back to the bills behind it. When a council member asks whether a retrofit or conversion program is working, the honest answer is that no one can tell yet.

What it costs

Progress reports arrive late and are hard to defend, and decisions such as which facility to retrofit next rest on guesswork.

How the products work together

EcoImpactHub keeps the city's carbon ledger across Scope 1, 2 and 3, recording fleet fuel, natural gas and purchased electricity as entries with a sourced emission factor and a verification status. Each month FluidGrids can load utility-bill and fuel-card exports into EcoImpactHub as ledger entries. AssetHandler reads those EcoImpactHub metrics against each facility, vehicle and streetlight circuit to rank energy use by asset, so the sustainability manager can see, for example, that two pump stations and an older public safety building drive most of the electricity figure. FluidGrids then pushes the ledger totals and targets into a BigConsole data sink, so the council console shows progress against the plan and drills down to the ledger lines behind each total.

The outcome it is designed for

Council sees climate progress drawn from the same record staff use, and the next retrofit is chosen from asset-level evidence rather than a hunch.

The concepts behind it

Challenge 6 of 6

One current picture for the emergency operations center

IntelWatchtower(opens IntelWatchtower in a new tab)EcoImpactHub(opens EcoImpactHub in a new tab)GovCitizenHub(opens GovCitizenHub in a new tab)AssetHandler(opens AssetHandler in a new tab)

The problem

When a storm or flood hits at night, the emergency operations center stands up with whoever is on call. Gauge readings arrive on one screen, flooding reports come in through the resident app and the non-emergency line, pump alarms land with public works, and closures are relayed by phone from police and fire. Each partner keeps its own log, so the room's shared picture is a whiteboard that is out of date the moment it is written. At the morning shift change, the incoming team gets a verbal briefing and a stack of handwritten notes.

What it costs

Decisions ride on a picture that is hours old, crews go to the loudest report instead of the worst one, and the handover loses what changed overnight.

How the products work together

EcoImpactHub is designed to check gauge and water readings against flood thresholds as they are recorded and flag the breach, with a triage view for sensor faults. IntelWatchtower is built for operations centers; here it is designed to run the flood response as a mission with an operational period, bringing EcoImpactHub gauge readings, clusters of GovCitizenHub flooding reports and AssetHandler work orders for pumps, barricades and sandbag crews onto one map. Only report counts and locations by area are designed to reach the map. Residents' names and contact details stay in GovCitizenHub, and no person records or threat scores are used. The watch team triages each alert and raises work orders in AssetHandler, and at shift change IntelWatchtower is designed to give the next team a reviewable list of what changed.

The outcome it is designed for

The operations center works from one current picture, crews go where conditions are worst, and the morning shift starts with a clear record of the night.

The concepts behind it

How it fits together

How the products hand off, from a resident's question to a council report

Two threads run through a city's week and meet in governed data. Everyday requests pass from Botlit to GovCitizenHub, through FluidGrids to AssetHandler and back. The storm picture runs from EcoImpactHub to IntelWatchtower and out to AssetHandler crews. SemanticFed then prepares governed data that FluidGrids loads into BigConsole for council and the public.

  1. To GovCitizenHub: A link to the right service form when the resident needs to file a report or an application.

  2. To FluidGrids: Designed to send a webhook carrying category, location and service to a FluidGrids webhook trigger.

  3. To AssetHandler: Designed to raise a work-order request matched to a public asset, such as streetlight SL-0442.

  4. To GovCitizenHub: A completed status, designed to resolve every linked report and notify each resident who filed one.

  5. To IntelWatchtower: Threshold breaches, such as a creek gauge above flood stage, designed to appear on the emergency map.

  6. To AssetHandler: Designed to raise emergency work orders for pumps, barricades and sandbag crews.

  7. To FluidGrids: Designed to pass governed, masked datasets to FluidGrids, which loads them into BigConsole data sinks and GovCitizenHub's open data catalog.

Step 1 of 8: Answer the resident

Products in this solution

What each product brings

  • GovCitizenHub

    Resident front door, casework and permits

    Built for agencies: a service catalog, guided applications, casework queues with service-level clocks, verifiable permits, resident reports routed by category and location with duplicates linked, and open data, all on one attributed record.

    Visit GovCitizenHubAll concepts

  • AssetHandler

    Maintenance record and work orders for public assets

    Holds streetlights, pumps, vehicles and facilities with custody, maintenance history and depreciation, and is designed to carry every linked resident report on one work order per asset.

    Visit AssetHandlerAll concepts

  • Botlit

    Resident services assistant

    Designed to give grounded, cited answers from the city's own service pages on web chat and messaging channels, with bot apps, knowledge bases, channel connectors, policy definitions and an execution ledger that records every run.

    Visit BotlitAll concepts

  • FluidGrids

    Routing rules and automation between products

    Versioned decision rules with webhook and scheduled workflows are designed to move records between products and existing systems, and its datasinks feed BigConsole consoles.

    Visit FluidGridsAll concepts

  • SemanticFed

    Governed data federation and privacy review

    Designed to query departmental systems where the data lives through one semantic model, with personal-data proposals that only a person can approve.

    Visit SemanticFedAll concepts

  • BigConsole

    Consoles for council, leadership and the public

    Consoles on backlog, response times and climate progress, fed through FluidGrids data sinks, with filters, drill-down, scoped sharing and embedding on a transparency page.

    Visit BigConsoleAll concepts

  • EcoImpactHub

    Environmental monitoring and carbon ledger

    Gauge, air and water readings checked against configurable thresholds, and a Scope 1, 2 and 3 ledger for municipal operations with sourced emission factors.

    Visit EcoImpactHubAll concepts

  • IntelWatchtower

    Emergency operations picture

    Built for operations centers: missions, a shared map, alert triage and shift handover, applied here to a city's flood or storm response.

    Visit IntelWatchtowerAll concepts

One platform underneath: Burdenoff Workspaces

All eight products run on Burdenoff Workspaces: one sign-on for staff in every department, role-based access so each team sees only the records it should, one audit trail of who did what and when, and one bill across the products.

Concept gallery

Every concept in this solution

15 concepts from 8 products. Each one links to its own page on the product's website, and every view has a link you can share.

Pitch kit

The Government solution in one minute

Residents see one government, but their requests cross many systems. Burdenoff brings together GovCitizenHub for services, casework and permits, AssetHandler for public assets and work orders, Botlit for a resident assistant, FluidGrids for routing, SemanticFed for governed data, BigConsole for council consoles, EcoImpactHub for environmental monitoring and IntelWatchtower for emergency operations, on one identity and one audit trail.

  • One front door: a cited, multilingual resident assistant over one service catalog with live request status
  • Permits that keep moving, with service-level clocks, applicant reminders and inspections planned by district
  • Resident reports matched to public assets, linked to one work order, and closed back to every reporter
  • Open data releases whose personal-data masking is approved by a named person
  • One map for the emergency operations center, with gauges, resident report counts, closures and crews
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Questions

Frequently asked

Do we have to replace our existing permitting or work-order systems?

Not on day one. The products are designed to be adopted one service or one department at a time. SemanticFed is designed to query existing departmental systems where the data lives, and FluidGrids can move records between existing tools and Burdenoff products, so a city can start with a single service, such as streetlight reports, and extend from there.

Does the AI decide residents' applications?

No. Botlit is designed to answer questions from published sources with citations and to hand off when it has no answer; it does not take or decide applications. AI suggestions inside GovCitizenHub, such as a flagged missing document, are designed to change nothing until an officer accepts them. Every decision stays with a named officer and is recorded with its reasons.

How is residents' personal data protected when we publish open data?

SemanticFed is designed to detect columns that look like personal data and propose a deny or mask rule for each, such as removing a phone number or generalizing an address to its block. Proposals stay inactive until a named person approves them, and each release is recorded. The approved dataset is then designed to reach GovCitizenHub's open data catalog with its version and license. Your own privacy and records policies still decide what is released.

Can each department keep its data separate?

Yes. The products run on Burdenoff Workspaces, where each agency or department can have its own workspace with role-based access, and every action is attributed in one audit trail. Staff sign in once, and each team sees only the records it is entitled to.

Why is an intelligence product part of a city solution?

IntelWatchtower is built for operations centers that need one current picture from many sources. An emergency operations center during a flood has the same need: gauge readings, resident reports, closures and crews on one map, alerts triaged, and a clean handover between operational periods. Only report counts and locations by area are designed to reach the map; residents' names and contact details stay in GovCitizenHub, and no person records or threat scores are used. Its labeling and report release controls are designed to keep internal notes separate from what the city releases.

Is this available today?

The products are pre-launch, with early-access waitlists open, and this page describes a solution concept: how they are designed to work together for an agency or municipality. Some hand-offs described here, such as routing resident reports to work orders, would be configured for your environment. We are glad to walk through what is available now and what is on the roadmap.

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This is a solution concept: it shows how Burdenoff products are designed to work together in this industry. The images are illustrations of the concepts, not screenshots of the actual products, and every name and figure in them is sample data.