Two major U.S. municipalities, Salt Lake City and Minneapolis, are using an artificial intelligence-powered platform to resolve community needs and simplify employee workflows.
The system in question is Smartsheet, a cloud-based work management platform, and the cities are using it to ease well-known, longstanding local government pain points.
TRANSFORMING HOMELESSNESS RESPONSE
In Salt Lake City, its Homeless Engagement and Response Team, led by Community Engagement Coordinator Stephen Fanale, is using the tool to address a difficult challenge around the nation — homelessness.
Fanale’s team manages a variety of reports submitted through the city’s mobile app, ranging from issues like homelessness-related trash and hazardous waste to encampment sightings and requests for outreach. Last year, the group of two received around 7,000 such reports.
“We then meet with all homeless providers within the city to try and mitigate concerns regarding homelessness, no matter who they affect — whether that’s the business owner that might be losing business because of an encampment in front of their business or the individual on the street who’s experiencing homelessness,” Fanale said. “Either way, we’re trying just to make it better for everyone.”
Through Smartsheet, reports submitted through the city’s mobile app are entered directly into a centralized platform. From there, the tool automatically assigns tasks — for example, hazardous waste reports are immediately sent to the city’s contracted cleanup organization. Before adopting Smartsheet, Fanale said, the system was managed in Google Sheets and Google Maps.
“We would receive the report and have to copy and paste that information — address, description, pictures, everything — into Google Maps, then into Google Sheets and then into an email to go to whoever [it] needed to go to and get notified,” Fanale said. “It was a lot of redundancy and not as secure either.”
Smartsheet’s AI-powered mapping takes automating tasks a step further, he said: “If there’s a report within a quarter mile of a school, Smartsheet, in conjunction with the map, recognizes that and goes directly to a community liaison police officer without us doing anything.” It has also strengthened planning efforts, with Fanale regularly providing data from the platform to top city officials.
“We get a ton of requests from the mayor’s office, especially close to budget season because they want to see where the need is, and by making trends more visible, the city can prioritize outreach efforts more strategically,” he said.
That increased visibility is just one example of the broader impact Smartsheet has had. The city has saved more than 450 hours per year by using it, which Fanale says reduced time-to-action from seven days to two, and launched new initiatives while increasing transparency on resource usage.
“Everyone wants to know what’s being done, especially because it’s their tax dollars. Being able to show exactly what we’re doing has made all the difference,” he said.
SIMPLIFYING THE PERMITTING PROCESS
In Minneapolis, Smartsheet has reshaped a common city service — permitting.
Just a few years ago, the municipality was overwhelmed with paper permit applications for events — many of them often difficult to read — which, according to Senior Business Analyst Scott Gehrig, frequently slowed down processing, communication and payment collection.
In response, the city’s permit administrative team adopted the Smartsheet platform, building on success with it that other departments had already experienced. Since implementing the system in 2021, Gehrig’s team has achieved a 50 percent reduction in the time spent reviewing and approving applications.
Key features like forms, dashboards, document generation and Docusign integration have been crucial for the city.
“The document generator takes all of the information input by an applicant and forms it into an actual PDF application that the permit processors can use to verify all the fields without looking at an Excel-style spreadsheet,” Gehrig said, noting that in collecting payments, the tool sends applicants a direct Docusign link. Using it has, he said, saved $1,200 in the past two months.
Automation has also been key to keeping everyone involved in permitting informed, with Smartsheet automatically checking event dates and notifying the police precinct one week in advance. Since implementation, more than 1,200 permits are processed a year via automation, manual data entry has been eliminated, and permits can be approved before event dates, without a backlog.
The team also uses Smartsheet for internal processes like annual driver’s license verification. Previously handled through lengthy email exchanges, the task now runs through an automated Smartsheet workflow where employees are prompted to submit updated license information, supervisors and risk management review and approve, and records are archived — all in about a week and a half instead of nearly a year.
“The time savings are simply unimaginable,” Gehrig said.
HELPING EVOLVE THE APPROACH TO WORK
As AI continues to advance, Smartsheet’s potential is likely to grow, according to Graham Stroman, vice president of North American public sector at the company.
“Today, AI is embedded throughout our platform to help customers take full advantage of Smartsheet’s capabilities — automating repetitive tasks, generating formulas, and summarizing data using our AI capabilities,” he said, indicating officials are “looking to build on our current AI capabilities that simplify how our customers interact with our platform, including better ways to visualize data and agentic AI capabilities.”
The goal is to enable users to replace repetitive tasks with automated workflows, eliminating the need for manual, tedious updates. This, he said, should allow city staffers in places like Minneapolis and Salt Lake City to focus on more impactful work.
“The challenges of the public sector have remained the same for decades; outdated technology, siloed systems, limited governance and standardization, and constantly evolving security threats,” Stroman said. Platforms like this one, he added, “not only address those challenges but give the public sector a solution to evolve how they approach work and deliver better outcomes for the citizens they serve.”
