Local Government

# Turn your 311 calls into citizen self-service.

City and county residents call about permits, trash pickup, utility bills, council meetings, and property taxes — information that's already on your website. Keyspider transforms your published content into an enterprise answer engine that deflects calls, saves staff hours, and meets ADA Title II before the 2026 deadline.

- Unified search across all city and county departments — one search bar, one deployment
- ADA Title II + WCAG 2.1 AA compliant — ready for the 2026 DOJ deadline
- Live across every department site in 2 weeks — no infrastructure changes required

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“What permits do I need for a deck addition?”

AI Answer⚡ 168ms

Source: Permits & Planning Dept

“When is the next city council meeting?”

AI Answer⚡ 142ms

Source: City Clerk — Meeting Schedule

“How do I dispute my property tax assessment?”

AI Answer⚡ 158ms

Source: Assessor's Office FAQ 2025

ADA Title II WCAG 2.1 AA Open Records Ready
The challenge

## Your residents are calling about answers that are already on your site.

Cities and counties publish permits, services, council records, utility information, and property data across dozens of department websites and document portals. But fragmented navigation and keyword-only search mean residents still call. The average 311 contact costs $7–$12 in staff time. Research shows 38–60% of those calls are about information that is already published — just not findable.

1

38–60% of 311 and general enquiry calls are information requests — residents asking about hours, fees, permits, or services that are already published on your site.

2

City and county content is distributed across 10–40+ department sub-sites, each with its own CMS, navigation, and isolated search — no resident can be expected to know which department to search.

3

ADA Title II now requires WCAG 2.1 AA digital accessibility from all local government entities by April 2026. Most CMS-native search widgets fail basic keyboard navigation and screen reader tests.

4

Open Records and FOIA requests pile up for documents — meeting minutes, contracts, ordinances — that are already public but buried in document libraries with no effective search.

5

Staff in Planning, Public Works, and the Clerk's office lose hours each week answering phones for the same 15 questions, leaving less time for complex constituent casework.

6

IT teams in small cities and counties have no capacity to manage or maintain a custom search implementation — deployment must be turnkey and ongoing support must be included.

The Keyspider solution

## Built for lean city and county IT teams — not enterprise IT departments.

Most local governments operate with small digital teams, fixed budgets, and no tolerance for 12-month implementations. Keyspider was designed to deploy in 2 weeks, require zero infrastructure changes, and run without ongoing IT maintenance.

### 311 call deflection through citizen self-service

Keyspider surfaces direct, cited answers to the most common resident questions — permit requirements, trash schedules, utility billing, property tax deadlines, business registration. When residents find answers instantly, 311 volume drops. Average reduction: 38% within 90 days. At $7–$12 per call, that's a measurable ROI in year one.

### Unified multi-department search

One Keyspider instance connects every department website — Planning, Public Works, Parks, Utilities, the Assessor's office, and the Clerk — into a single search bar. Residents no longer need to know which department handles their question. Search once, get the right answer from the right department.

### Open Records & meeting minutes discoverability

City council agendas, meeting minutes, ordinances, resolutions, and public contracts become instantly searchable by any resident. Role-based access automatically restricts pre-decisional documents and drafts from public queries. FOIA and Open Records request volume drops as residents self-serve.

### ADA Title II + WCAG 2.1 AA compliant search

Keyspider's search UI meets WCAG 2.1 AA and ADA Title II requirements out of the box — full keyboard navigation, ARIA labels, screen reader support, and compliant contrast ratios. Passes third-party accessibility audits. Meets the April 2026 DOJ compliance deadline without additional development.

### Permits, planning & development self-service

Planning and building departments handle the highest volume of repetitive enquiries — what permits are required, how to submit applications, fee schedules, zoning lookups. Keyspider indexes all of this and surfaces answers instantly, cutting Planning department call volume and counter queues.

### Turnkey deployment, zero IT overhead

Keyspider installs via a JavaScript snippet or CMS plugin — no new servers, no infrastructure changes, no data migration. Go live across all department sites in 2 weeks. Ongoing maintenance, index updates, and relevance tuning are handled by Keyspider's team, not yours.

## What cities and counties achieve with Keyspider

38%

avg reduction in 311 & information call volume

$7–$12

cost per avoidable call eliminated

2 weeks

from signed contract to live search

ADA Title II

compliant — ready for the 2026 DOJ deadline

## How cities and counties use Keyspider

### County: unified search across 14 department sites in 2 weeks

A mid-sized county deployed Keyspider across all 14 department microsites in under 2 weeks. Residents now use one search bar to find information across Planning, Tax, Health, Parks, and the Recorder's office. Information-only call volume dropped 38% in the first 60 days — without any changes to the existing CMS.

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### City FOIA office: response time from 18 days to 4 days

A city clerk's office was answering 220 FOIA requests per month — 60% late. The problem was document discovery across 12 disconnected systems. Keyspider Workplace Search unified all 12 sources. Average FOIA response time dropped from 18 business days to 4. Annual staff time savings: $180K.

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### Municipal planning department: permits search cuts counter queues

A city's Planning and Building department fielded 300+ calls per week about permit requirements, application procedures, and fee schedules. After deploying Keyspider AI Search on their website, 42% of those calls stopped within a single quarter — residents found the answers themselves before picking up the phone.

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### City council: meeting records searchable by any resident

A mid-sized city made four years of council meeting minutes, resolutions, and ordinances instantly searchable by any resident. Open Records requests for documents already online dropped by 55%. The city clerk's office redirected that time to processing complex requests and building a proactive disclosure library.

Read more →

## Ready to give your users better answers?

AI Search, AI Assistant, and Workplace Search. Deployed in days, not months. See it live on your own content.

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