Sterling Heights moves from AI analysis to action

Rather than wait for the market to settle, Sterling Heights made a decision: move forward, learn through responsible use, and give employees a practical productivity tool now. The City selected GovAI and rolled it out to all 600 full-time employees.

From exploration to organization-wide adoption

For Sterling Heights, success required more than purchasing technology. It required visible leadership, a cross-department implementation strategy, and an emphasis on employee ownership.

Dwojakowski helped move the City from broad exploration to action, recognizing that successful AI adoption needs someone willing to make a decision and champion the work across the organization.

GovAI gave Sterling Heights a government-focused platform that employees could use for daily work while keeping the organization’s needs, workflows, and public-service mission at the center of the rollout.

Saving time across City departments

Sterling Heights has seen GovAI create value across departments, including the Library, Parks and Recreation, Police, Fire, Department of Public Works, City Hall, Administration, and Budget.

The platform supports a wide range of staff work—from reviewing and summarizing reports to drafting communications, preparing funding materials, organizing data, and developing first drafts of documents that employees can then review and refine.

In one example, a report-review process that previously required about three and a half hours of staff time was reduced to approximately 15 minutes using GovAI to analyze and synthesize the material. Staff still review the output and remain responsible for the final work product, but the tool eliminates much of the repetitive first-pass effort.

Other City use cases include:

Making AI accessible to employees—and residents

Sterling Heights also chose GovAI for its public-facing chatbot, replacing a traditional website-search experience with a conversational way for residents to find information.

For a city serving a diverse community, accessibility was an important consideration. GovAI supports resident questions in English and Arabic, helping residents interact with City information in the language that is most useful to them.

The City’s early usage data demonstrated meaningful engagement. Across the employee and public-facing experience, GovAI recorded approximately 1,000 active users in a 30-day period, while the public assistant was receiving roughly 100 prompts per day.

The City views this as an important foundation—not an endpoint.

A government-focused alternative

As employees encounter AI tools in their personal lives and across the broader technology market, Sterling Heights wanted to provide a practical, organization-supported option for city work.

The City communicated a clear message to employees: use the approved GovAI platform for work-related tasks rather than relying on free, consumer-oriented AI services for City information.

That approach gives staff access to a tool designed around public-sector needs while helping the organization establish consistent expectations for responsible use.

Building a culture of responsible innovation

Sterling Heights’ experience offers a practical lesson for local governments considering AI: waiting for a “perfect” solution can delay real benefits for employees and residents.

The City did not approach GovAI as a one-time technology purchase. It approached the implementation as an ongoing program of adoption, training, experimentation, and continuous improvement.

For Dwojakowski, the decision was ultimately about municipal service.