Give staff an approved place for the work they take to ChatGPT.
GovAI is the AI work platform for local government.
Staff already use ChatGPT to draft replies and summarize records. Ask it how long your retention schedule says to keep a records request, and it has to guess. GovAI comes set up for local government, with guardrails built in and an audit trail IT can check.
The gap
What ChatGPT doesn’t know about your government.
ChatGPT doesn’t know your ordinances and bylaws, your retention schedule, or how your council names its agenda items. On personal accounts, IT can’t see what staff paste in or what comes back. Every workflow starts from a blank box, so someone on your staff has to write the rules, build each one, and keep it working as things change.
Staff already use ChatGPT for this kind of work, often on personal accounts.
What you need instead
Staff start on day one with the local government work already set up.
GovAI comes with ready-made skills for government, guardrails, and admin controls. We build and run your first Agents with you, starting with the job that piles up most, like records requests, agenda packets, or policy answers. Staff spend the first month on the work itself.
Already part of GovAI
- Ready-made skills for government
- Everyday Agents built and run by GovAI, like bylaw lookups and meeting minutes
- Specialist Agents for records requests and staff reports, priced by the job
- Data Shield, which flags or blocks sensitive information as staff type
- Single sign-on, admin controls, and an audit trail
- Onboarding and coaching by department
What you’d build yourself with ChatGPT
- A custom GPT for each workflow, built and tested by your team
- Retention rules and exemption logic, designed by your team
- Audit logs exported before the 30-day window on Enterprise closes
- Rebuilding every custom GPT as a plugin before OpenAI retires them on December 11, 2026
- Staff time spent building, before the real work starts
Side by side
Five questions to ask before you pick an AI platform.
Where does the risk sit if something goes wrong?
Government work runs in one approved system that IT controls from day one. We never use your content to train models.
Free and personal accounts carry no retention rule or audit trail. Business and Enterprise add controls, but IT has to set them up and enforce them.
Who can see and audit what staff do with it?
The audit trail shows who did what. Admins see it from the dashboard on every plan.
Only on Enterprise and Edu, through the Compliance Platform. Its logs are kept for 30 days unless someone downloads them.
Does it know how your government actually works?
Ready-made skills for government come with every plan, and answers draw on the policies and files you connect.
Answers come from general training data, unless someone builds and maintains a connection to your files.
Who builds the workflow, and who keeps it working?
GovAI builds, runs, and maintains the Agents for your first jobs. Your team can build its own on the same platform.
Your team builds each one. OpenAI’s own FOIA demo shows staff how to build it themselves as a custom GPT.
What does it actually cost to get the work done?
One annual price for your organization, with use capacity sized into the plan. Onboarding and coaching are included.
Priced per seat, plus the staff time to build, test, and rebuild workflows as rules and files change.
Feature by feature
What each one includes, plan by plan.
Some of what ChatGPT offers is real and useful. This table shows which pieces come finished for local government and which ones your team assembles.
AI models
GovAI picks the models behind the platform and updates them for you
OpenAI’s own models. Which ones staff get depends on the plan.
Single sign-on
Included on every plan
Only on Business and Enterprise
Admin console and audit logs
Admin dashboard, controls, and audit trail on every plan
Only on Enterprise and Edu. Logs kept 30 days unless exported.
Personal and sensitive data
Data Shield on every plan. It flags or blocks sensitive information as staff type and scans every uploaded file.
No local government rules. Generic retention settings only.
Ready-made local government work
Ready-made skills for government on every plan
Needs your own staff, or an outside consultant, to build and maintain it
Agents that run a job end to end
Everyday Agents built and run by GovAI on every plan. More Agents priced by the job.
Needs your own staff to build them. Custom GPTs retire December 11, 2026.
ChatGPT plan details from OpenAI’s help center and pricing pages, checked September 29, 2026. Plans change often.
Platform and people
People who know local government stay with you.
We bring what we have learned across 180+ local governments to every rollout, training session, and new piece of work.
Included with GovAI
- Academy and video training for every staff member
- Standard onboarding and live group training
- Chat with an AI expert, plus tech support
- Regular 1:1s with a dedicated customer success manager
- Quarterly office hours, plus peer user groups on Connected
With ChatGPT
- No dedicated success manager on self-serve plans, just standard vendor support
- No training program built around local government jobs
- Onboarding by department is yours to plan and run
- No office hours or peer group in the contract
It is like adding an AI team without having to build one yourself.
ChatGPT is priced per seat. With 100 licenses, someone decides who makes the list. Staff left off go back to personal accounts and do the same work with none of the guardrails.
GovAI is one annual price for your organization. Everyone on staff gets access, use capacity is sized into your plan, and your price is set for the contract year. When the work grows, add Agents. Each one is priced by the job, with the capacity it needs included.
Questions
Questions buyers ask us.
Our staff already like ChatGPT. Why switch?
A lot of staff do. The better test is which workload needs an audit trail behind it: a FOIA response, a council packet, a policy answer someone might have to defend later. ChatGPT is built for general use, so staff start from a blank box with no local rules. GovAI starts from local government work.
Doesn’t ChatGPT Enterprise already have security controls?
Yes. Enterprise adds single sign-on, an Admin Console, and the Compliance Platform, and those are real controls. Retention rules, exemption logic, and packet workflows still aren’t part of it, so someone at your organization has to design them and keep them current. We never use your content to train models, with Data Shield on or off. GovAI is SOC 2 Type II compliant and follows the NIST AI Risk Management Framework. Your IT lead can request the SOC 2 report on our Trust Center.
What about ChatGPT Gov?
ChatGPT Gov is a version agencies host in their own Azure commercial or Azure Government cloud, which helps them meet requirements like FedRAMP High and CJIS. It’s built for agencies with the IT team to run that setup. It comes with the same blank box and no local government workflows.
Can’t we build our own FOIA tool with a custom GPT?
You can, and OpenAI publishes a demo showing how. OpenAI is retiring custom GPTs on December 11, 2026, and asks creators to rebuild them as plugins. Some Enterprise workspaces can defer to February 11, 2027. Anything built that way gets rebuilt on OpenAI’s schedule.
How long before staff can use this?
Staff can start on day one. Ready-made skills for government and the guardrails are already set up. We pick the first job with you, usually the one piling up most, and build and run that Agent. Then our local government experts coach each department as its work goes live.
Does GovAI replace Microsoft Copilot too?
No. Copilot stays for work inside Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. GovAI runs the governed work, secure chat, and Agents on named jobs like packets, records, and permits. Most organizations run both.
More comparisons
ChatGPT plan details from OpenAI’s help center and pricing pages, checked September 29, 2026. Plans change often.
See the difference for yourself.
Bring your hardest questions to a live tour, or ask a specialist how GovAI fits beside the tools you use today.