How to apply AI in municipal management without losing control of the process
Municipal teams are exhausted. Every day they draft minutes, reports, specifications, certifications, and memoranda; they correct versions, adjust paragraphs, update annexes, and repeat processes for minor formatting or interpretation errors. Every meeting must have its minutes, every file its justification, every procedure its parallel report. The administrative burden suffocates technicians and specialists, reducing their operational time—the time to think, plan, or supervise—to a bare minimum.
According to the FEMP Barometer 2023, A municipal technician dedicates between the 45% and 60% of your day to tasks related to documentation and internal communication. It's not that there's a lack of talent: there's a lack of time to apply it. And this is where artificial intelligence (AI) can make a real difference if implemented methodically and without losing control.
Published October 9, 2025 · Green infrastructure strategy · Institutions
Innovation doesn't stop due to a lack of talent, but due to a lack of operational time.
1. AI is not a technological project, it is a management tool
For years, local councils have approached digitization as if it were a purely technical matter. However, implementing AI is not about buying software: it's about... redesign how work is done.The risk lies not in the technology itself, but in turning it into a directionless fad.
When AI is approached as an “innovation project” disconnected from day-to-day operations, it ends up depending on suppliers who don't understand administrative processes or their traceability obligations. But when it's applied as a management tool—serving the technicians, not the other way around—it becomes a lever for saving time and improving quality.
Artificial intelligence does not replace public management: it professionalizes it.
The key is in adapting AI to municipal operations, not to try to force the municipality to adapt to it. This involves defining which processes are repetitive and can be assisted, establishing human validations, and ensuring that each result is reviewable, documented, and traceable.
AI as a “trendy project”
Implementations disconnected from processes, supplier dependence, and little institutional control.
AI as a management tool
At the service of the technician: saves time, maintains traceability and respects human validation.
2. Areas where applying AI already provides real value
Far from being science fiction, AI can solve concrete, everyday tasks that currently consume thousands of hours in local government. These are some of the areas where it is already being successfully applied:
a) Assisted drafting of administrative documents
Minutes, reports, documents, certificates, or information notes can be drafted using AI, respecting legal and technical terminology. A technician can reduce the time spent on this task from four hours to less than 45 minutes, while still maintaining final review and human signature.
b) Intelligent document classification
AI systems allow for the automatic labeling, sorting, and searching of files. They don't replace the archivist, but they eliminate duplicates and improve the immediate retrieval of information.
c) Analysis of urban data
Predictive models help anticipate maintenance needs, energy consumption, and issues with lighting and waste. They allow for prioritizing investments and reducing unforeseen problems.
d) Internal support assistants
AI tools can help draft minutes or reports, not for automatic sending, but to gain agility and uniformity. The final control remains with the coach.
e) Communication and transparency
AI can generate report summaries or visualizations for open data portals, facilitating citizen understanding without replacing the institutional voice.
Important: In public administration, AI can facilitate access, but never replace human care. If used in front-office, it should be as a filter or guide and always with the option to speak to a person.
These use cases are documented in reports from the OECD on AI in the public sector and in the FEMP – Local Innovation, where it is highlighted that the real impact comes when AI frees up human time without losing institutional control.
3. How to maintain institutional control
Every AI application must start from one essential principle: AI doesn't decide, it assists.
To maintain control and trust, municipalities must establish clear rules before implementing any system. Some of the most effective are:
- Governing data. Ensure that information sources are under public control and comply with the GDPR.
- Always validate the outputs. All AI-generated responses or reports must be reviewed by a technician before being published or signed.
- Avoid black boxes. Demand transparency on how the model generates results and what criteria it uses.
- Evaluate with pilots. Before implementing it throughout the entire city council, test it in a small area and measure real results.
- Train the staff. No tool is useful if the person using it does not understand its limitations.
This approach aligns with the report's recommendations “OECD ”State of Implementation of AI in the Public Sector” (2023),which emphasizes the importance of maintaining human review and institutional traceability in each phase of the process.
In Direction & Results, We apply it through our line Advanced digital strategy and applied AI,where we help municipalities implement AI without losing control or public trust.
4. Real case: Viladecans, AI with criteria and governance
The City Council of Viladecans (Barcelona), member of the Spanish Network of Smart Cities (RECI), has implemented an artificial intelligence system to improve file management and reduce the paperwork burden.
The project, developed with semantic analysis tools, allows for the classification of documents and the generation of draft responses based on models trained with previous administrative texts. But the key difference lies in its governance: a joint committee Made up of ICT technicians, the Secretariat and Citizen Services, it supervises each step and validates the outputs before their incorporation into the file.
Results:
- Reduction of 32 % in processing times.
- Recovery of more than 2,000 hours per year technical work.
- Full traceability of each document generated.
- Without loss of control: all decisions continue to have human validation.
Experience shows that AI does not replace technical expertise, Rather, it amplifies it by eliminating the most repetitive tasks. The added value lies in the work structure, not the algorithm.
5. Checklist: Does your AI work for you or complicate your life?
- Do your technicians spend more than half their time writing or reviewing documents?
- Do you know exactly what tasks AI performs and who validates them?
- Have you documented how your data is processed and how the models are trained?
- Has your staff received basic training before using smart tools?
- Can you explain in simple terms how AI makes decisions in your municipality?
If any answer is “no”, it doesn’t mean that AI doesn’t work: it means that It is not well governed.
6. Our conclusions
Public administration doesn't need more technology: it needs more time to manage. AI, when applied correctly, is essential. It does not replace the municipal technician., It returns hours of useful work. When used with clear criteria and institutional responsibility, it frees up human intelligence for what matters most: think, decide and improve the city.
AI does not replace public management, it professionalizes it.
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