A city council takes 90 days to approve building permits and wants AI to speed it up. How do you approach it?
Think first
Public sector: legitimacy, explainability, equity and procurement constraints shape everything.
Strong answer
Map the 90 days: how much is queue time, how much is back-and-forth for incomplete applications, how much is assessment. Usually incomplete applications drive most delay, so an intake assistant that checks completeness against the rules and tells applicants exactly what is missing can cut weeks without AI making any decision. Assessment support comes second: summarising an application against relevant planning rules with citations for the officer. Constraints to raise early: data sovereignty and hosting requirements, accessibility standards, records retention, freedom-of-information exposure of prompts and outputs, and the need to explain any recommendation to an applicant. Decisions stay with officers. Measure median days to decision, percentage of complete first submissions, and officer hours per application.
Weak-answer indicators
- AI approves permits
- Ignores sovereignty, accessibility or FOI
- No baseline
Likely follow-up questions
- An applicant claims the AI treated them unfairly. What evidence do you have?