Give every department a governed place to work beside Copilot.
GovAI is the AI work platform for local government.
Copilot helps staff draft a memo in Word or tidy a spreadsheet in Excel. It doesn’t know your exemptions, your retention schedule, or who has to sign off. GovAI comes set up for local government, with guardrails built in and an audit trail IT can check.
The gap
What Copilot doesn’t know about your government.
Copilot works on the file in front of you. It drafts, summarizes, and tidies. It doesn’t know your retention schedule, your exemptions, or the order your council packet goes in, and it can’t tell who has to sign off. Every Copilot Studio agent starts blank, so someone on your staff has to build it, test it, and keep it current.
Copilot Chat comes with eligible Microsoft 365 plans, so staff are likely using it today.
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 Copilot
- A Copilot Studio agent for each workflow, built and tested by your team
- Retention rules and exemption logic, designed by your team
- A cleanup of old sharing settings, so Copilot doesn’t surface files it shouldn’t
- Copilot Studio credits for every agent your team builds
- A Copilot license for each person who needs answers from work files
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.
Licensed Copilot runs inside your Microsoft 365 tenant. It can surface any file a staff member can open, so old sharing settings come along with it.
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.
Microsoft Purview records Copilot activity. IT reviews it there, in its own tools.
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 plus the email, chats, and files a licensed user can open. Your rules aren’t in there unless someone builds them in.
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 workflow in Copilot Studio, then tests and maintains it.
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.
A monthly license per user on top of each Microsoft 365 seat, plus Copilot Studio credits for agents. Plus the staff time to build them.
Feature by feature
What each one includes, plan by plan.
Copilot is useful inside Word and Excel. 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
Microsoft picks the models behind each feature
Single sign-on
Included on every plan
Uses your Microsoft sign-in
Admin console and audit logs
Admin dashboard, controls, and audit trail on every plan
Microsoft 365 admin center and Purview, set up and reviewed by IT
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. Sensitivity labels and data loss prevention depend on your Microsoft plan.
Outlook, Teams, and SharePoint
Connectors on every plan, for every department
Grounded in work files only with a paid license. Copilot Chat alone is grounded on the web.
Ready-made local government work
Ready-made skills for government on every plan
Needs your own staff, or a Microsoft partner, to build it in Copilot Studio
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, billed on Copilot Studio credits
Copilot details from Microsoft’s pricing, Copilot Studio, and Purview pages, checked September 29, 2026. Plans change often.
Run both
Keep Copilot and add GovAI for the governed work.
Most organizations run both. Copilot stays inside Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. GovAI runs the governed work, secure chat, and Agents on named jobs, and connects to the Outlook, Teams, and SharePoint your staff already use.
Run in GovAI
- Records requests and staff reports, with a Specialist Agent
- Bylaw lookups, meeting minutes, and policy answers, with Everyday Agents
- Ready-made skills for government
- Data Shield, admin controls, and an audit trail
- Access for every staff member, including people without a Copilot license
Keep using Copilot for
- Drafting and rewriting inside Word
- Formulas and summaries inside Excel
- Building slides in PowerPoint
- Email and meeting catch-up for licensed staff
How to run both
- 01List which jobs stay in Word and Excel, and which need a governed place to run.
- 02Turn on GovAI’s SharePoint, Outlook, and Teams connectors, so staff work from the files they already have.
- 03Pick the first job with us, like the records request backlog, and give every department access.
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 Copilot
- Standard support from Microsoft or your Microsoft partner
- 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.
Copilot is priced per user, per month, on top of each Microsoft 365 license, and Copilot Studio agents draw on credits billed separately. So most organizations license a few people, and everyone else goes without. If Copilot worked for the clerk, records, HR, and finance, count the seats you’d need across the organization, then compare that to one line item.
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.
We already pay for Copilot. Why add GovAI?
Keep Copilot. It’s good at work inside Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, and nothing here asks you to give that up. The question is where the work that needs an audit trail runs: a FOIA response, a council packet, a policy answer someone might have to defend later. Copilot doesn’t know your retention schedule or your council naming conventions. GovAI is set up for that work.
Does GovAI connect to our Microsoft 365?
Yes. Every GovAI plan includes connectors for SharePoint, Outlook, and Teams. Staff can work with the email, meetings, and files they already have access to from inside GovAI. Your admins decide which connectors are turned on.
We’re in GCC. Do we have to leave our Microsoft tenant?
No. We don’t ask you to leave Microsoft 365. Your content stays yours, we never use it to train models, and the audit trail shows who did what. 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.
Isn’t Copilot cheaper for a few users?
For a small pilot, per-user pricing looks cheap. If it works, the seat count grows with every department that wants in, and agents add credits on top. Add up what those seats would cost across the organization. Then compare it to one annual price that covers everyone, with Agents included and more available as the work grows.
Can’t we build our own FOIA agent in Copilot Studio?
You can. Copilot Studio has a builder, and a capable staff member or a Microsoft partner can make one. The work is what comes after: testing it against real requests, updating it when exemptions, forms, or staff change, and keeping an audit trail around it. GovAI builds, runs, and maintains that Agent for you.
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.
More comparisons
Copilot details from Microsoft’s pricing, Copilot Studio, and Purview 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.