Every organization faces increasing pressure to innovate, but municipalities in particular have to navigate the challenges of outdated technology, limited budgets, and fewer resources to accomplish day-to-day tasks. But with advances in AI, it’s gotten easier for municipal governments to enhance service delivery, strengthen security, meet growing citizen demands, and operate with fewer resources — provided this technology transformation is approached thoughtfully and securely.
Taking refuge in data security
Like many municipal governments, Northern Rockies Regional Municipality in British Columbia dealt with cost sensitivity, aging legacy systems that posed security concerns, and resource constraints that held back technology advancements. Robert Blain, Technological Services Manager, acknowledges these challenges: “We needed to enable collaboration with constituents and still ensure solid compliance around our digital interactions and content.”
Though use of AI was on the rise, Northern Rockies initially took a cautious approach to rolling out AI-enabled tools. Protecting confidential information and ensuring it wouldn’t be used improperly in training or prompting an AI model was paramount. In fact, Blain bluntly explains, “We issued an email to all employees that they weren’t to use AI. Period. We first needed to make sure we were in a secure environment.”
Northern Rockies needed a solution that would address their challenges, but with the control and flexibility to take a measured approach.
Getting started with Secure AI
That’s when the agency turned to Box, and more specifically, the AI capabilities embedded across Intelligent Content Management. Having granular, individual-level access control over content held in Box gave Blain the confidence to loosen the AI restrictions, at least within Box’s secure environment — avoiding a reliance on riskier outside vendors. Blain explains, “We became comfortable knowing that Box is not going to be training on our data. And Box exceeds most countries’ strict security policies.”
The agency’s trust in Box security features helped Blain’s team gain the faith they needed to protect and govern the content used and made with AI. The decision to build on Box AI is moving Northern Rockies into a new echelon of government innovation. In a recent customer panel, Blain shared insights and opportunities from Northern Rockies’ journey into Intelligent Content Management with Box.
As a first use of AI, Northern Rockies tackled better ways to surface important information from massive stores of unstructured data — files, contracts, and more. Using AI, they could query data directly instead of manually sifting through the documents one by one.
For example, when a new technology arrived with complicated, unwieldy documentation, Blain was able to quickly solve a technical problem by asking Box AI to query the materials. He describes: “It came back with five documents and four solutions. Within seconds I was solving a technical problem just by using AI to query our unstructured data.”
He notes: “One of the biggest things was the ability to search beyond the search bar — with context and meaning — instead of scrolling through a whole bunch of files.”
Expediting FOIA requests
The confidence the team got from the first toe-dips into AI led to more and more use cases. One huge pain point for Northern Rockies — and a lot of organizations — is that sharing sensitive files and information via email is a huge vector of risk. Blain’s team partnered with San Francisco-based software company mxHERO, whose platform integrates seamlessly with Box, to automate the ingestion of agency emails and their attachments directly into Box — making it easier to find attachments, and more importantly, to apply governance rules.
This didn’t just make information-sharing more secure and agile; it helped facilitate the handling of Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. Now, when a FOIA request comes in from a constituent, managers no longer need to comb through legions of email to find information related to a specific incident. Box AI finds relevant information quickly and reliably. This automation has reduced the cost and time it takes to address FOIA requests so much that Blain expects more people will start making requests due to easier access..
Along the way, Box AI has revealed surprising insights about the kinds of questions users ask, helping Blain better focus his efforts on solving constituent problems. Additionally, metadata extraction from media assets like photos and videos now allows quick identification of files relevant to incidents without the need to manually scan hundreds or thousands of images and have a human weed through them manually.
Automation, but make it human-controlled
Despite the opportunities AI automation has granted Northern Rockies, Blain emphasizes that it’s still a tool to augment — not replace — human judgment. He says, “AI requires human oversight for context and the subtleties only humans understand.” For instance, sarcasm, tone, and sincerity are difficult for AI to detect, so at Northern Rockies, humans review AI-generated content to ensure it’s appropriate and authentic.
Blain also stresses the importance of using multiple opinions and sources to validate AI results rather than relying on a single output. Ultimately, he says, “The human is in control and has the final word and ownership.” This balance preserves trust and ensures communications with constituents always feel genuine.
The next frontier in AI for Northern Rockies
Blain now looks forward to the AI transformation of HR efforts at Northern Rockies. The HR team manages numerous union agreements and employment types — from firefighters to lifeguards to public works staff — which can make HR document creation complex and time consuming. Box AI will easily help with this.
For instance, Blain foresees creating AI agents — automatic workflows based on given instructions — that can generate offer letters tailored to each position’s clauses and language. “Something like Doc Gen could create a first draft that HR can tweak, saving hours spent pulling together documents or copying clauses incorrectly,” he describes.
Optimally, this would free HR professionals to focus on strategy and employee relations rather than repetitive paperwork. Northern Rockies is already working with Box Consulting to modernize HR processes, recognizing that thousands of tasks could benefit from AI assistance.
He’s also excited about the potential to use AI to analyze multimedia files beyond basic metadata, adding richer context to help organize and classify data. “It’s a big pool of unstructured data, and once you add structure, you really have power,” he says.
Advice for other municipalities starting their AI journey
With AI becoming mainstream and AI agents joining the workforce, smaller agencies suddenly have powerful tools to automate key workflows stemming from their unstructured data. Blain encourages other leaders to start early and small: “Make use of the Box community and GitHub. Others have gone before you, and there are examples that can walk you through the process.”
He also recommends engaging Box’s expert consultants who bring fresh perspectives and can identify key problems that insiders might miss. He encourages agency technology leaders to “do something — even if it’s small — just to get exposure.”
Northern Rockies’ experience shows that even smaller government agencies can harness AI to transform workflows, improve citizen services, and maintain security and compliance. By starting small, building trust in secure platforms, and keeping humans firmly in control, the agency is unlocking the true potential of intelligent automation. As Blain puts it, AI is “a new superpower” that advances what an agency can do by orders of magnitude, “if it’s embraced thoughtfully.”
To learn more about Northern Rockies Regional Municipality’s use of Intelligent Content Management, watch the video.
