Making a connection: City of Cornwall leverages AI in local government

As a designated landing zone by the Canadian government, the City of Cornwall, Ontario, experienced an influx of asylum seekers, resulting in increased information and service requests that strained city personnel and resources and also led to complex communication challenges. With the rapid emergence of artificial intelligence, Cornwall IT leadership had a vision to utilize the technology to address those issues and optimize processes. But by working with RSM, the AI project had more expansive benefits and advantages than initially anticipated.

Diagnosing extensive translation challenges

Cornwall sought to provide asylum seekers with quick access to human and housing services and support their acclimation into the community; however, with the potential for over 50 different native languages, obstacles emerged when helping people understand and obtain necessary services. 

“The translation created some long time delays,” says Robbie Beyer, RSM national AI practice lead. “It was challenging and causing a lot of stress for the people that were looking to come to Canada to seek asylum.”

The translation work necessary was unrealistic for human and housing services staff to take on and hiring translators and bringing in additional help from bigger cities such as Ottawa and Toronto was very costly.

“It was very quickly becoming unmanageable,” says Louis Savard, the City of Cornwall’s director of information technology, digitization, innovation and special projects. “You’re caught between a rock and a hard place. You have to provide the service, but you don’t have the staff. So, the knee-jerk reaction is, let’s hire more staff. But you can’t hire more staff. So, let’s subcontract, but that comes at a cost. So, we looked at AI and said, ‘could AI be part of the solution?’ This ended up being the logical jumping off point to delve into AI and expand on our broader strategic technological direction.”

Collaborating to develop innovative AI strategies

RSM’s collaboration with Cornwall initially began with the development of an IT master plan for the city, and continued with the development of an AI roadmap and the design of an intake process for asylum seekers, anchored with clearly defined goals to establish a strong and unified path to enhance service delivery and create meaningful impact.  

After completing the AI blueprint, the RSM team proposed CiCi, an agentic AI solution that would interact with asylum claimants upon arrival. CiCi would enable efficient and accurate translation services, integrate with city systems to log cases, and facilitate access to health and human services to help individuals transition more smoothly into the community.

Uncovering opportunities to better serve the community through technology

While developing the AI blueprint, RSM and Cornwall leadership also identified the absence of a centralized case management system for the city as a whole and uncovered digital gaps in how the city collected and utilized data to serve the community. In response, RSM worked with Cornwall stakeholders to create Cornwall Connect, an extensive constituent-facing portal to create more efficient access to key city resources and services.

“We noticed that this is not just an asylum claimant's problem,” says Beyer. “This is a broader customer service problem that we needed to address.”

The RSM team leveraged Microsoft Dynamics CRM as the back end for Cornwall Connect, establishing a reliable online portal for citizens to instantly find necessary information and report issues or concerns that are routed to the right department.

Expanding transformation strategies across key city functions

The design project for asylum claimants served as a wedge to drive broader digital transformation, sparking additional conversations about how the AI platform can be scaled and adapted to meet needs in other areas. When the Canadian government changed the mandate for Cornwall to receive asylum claimants, the city and RSM quickly pivoted to apply the AI solution toward a much broader customer service use case.

“This is something that we could open up to the broader community,” says Beyer. “The design project really helped identify a lot of other digital transformation opportunities for Cornwall to make an impact and serve their citizens better.”

To better align with the city’s specific requirements, a customized AI solution was developed in collaboration with RSM, with Microsoft’s Copilot Studio, Azure AI Services and Power Platform, which addressed the city’s issues related to streamlined data collection while controlling costs and overcoming a shortage of staffing. In addition, with a unique understanding of challenges within the public sector and after several successful AI projects for cities and municipalities in Canada and the United States, the RSM team leveraged industry accelerators to rapidly implement a comprehensive solution to address Cornwall’s concerns.

“RSM is focused on helping modernize the operations of public sector and government services clients, and over the last several years, we have collaborated with the City of Cornwall to support their evolving technological needs. This initiative is the perfect example of how AI can support modernization efforts in public sector operations,” says Rhett Nussey, RSM management consulting government services leader.

Today, Cornwall is using AI technology to give all citizens easier access to a wide range of services from housing and libraries to transit and recycling. In collaboration with RSM, CiCi’s functionality was adapted from its envisioned initial role of efficient service delivery for asylum claimants to meet evolving community needs by integrating a conversational agentic AI approach that seamlessly guides all citizens to the human and housing services information and solutions they need.

“The technology is so applicable everywhere else,” says Savard. “Now we’re having internal conversations with other departments to determine how we can use it to be more efficient.”

Leveraging innovation to elevate overall operations

With the new AI-driven approach developed and implemented by RSM, the City of Cornwall has experienced several direct benefits, including:

In addition, the comprehensive Cornwall Connect portal centralized the city’s case management efforts, establishing a more efficient solution to meet citizen needs while enhancing overall community engagement.

Future-state technology improvements are already planned for RSM and the City of Cornwall, including creating further integrations between Cornwall Connect and CiCi, as well as investigating the integration of Microsoft Field Service into Cornwall Connect to create more efficient and detailed service delivery. In addition, Cornwall is currently working with RSM to implement Microsoft Dynamics 365 Finance to modernize and optimize the city’s finance operations.

Creating a foundation for ongoing success

By establishing more efficient and effective constituent solutions, Cornwall is now recognized as a leader in innovation, with users empowered to own their data, less apprehension about using AI and new technology, improved access to services, more time for employees to dedicate to strategic tasks, and more efficient onboarding of future case managers.