Helping Residents Find Answers Faster
The City of Kawartha Lakes serves approximately 80,000 residents across the largest geographic region in Southern Ontario. As a single tier municipality, it is responsible for delivering the full range of local government services across rural and urban communities such as Lindsay, Bobcaygeon and Fenelon Falls.
As part of a capital project to migrate the existing website from a legacy platform to a new system, staff engaged residents to understand what the new site needed to deliver. The feedback was clear: residents wanted a digital experience that was intuitive, fast, reliable, and comparable to the digital tools they use every day. Improving the online experience became a central goal of the migration.
However, as site migration progressed, project staff uncovered a deeper issue. Even after significant effort to improve site structure, including sitemap changes and user journey mapping, it quickly became evident that reorganizing the website alone was not enough. No matter how the more than 500 pages were structured, or how up-to-date the information was, residents still struggled to find answers to their questions.
This challenge extended beyond residents. Front line staff often had to search across multiple pages or rely on external search engines to locate information before responding. The result was frustration for both residents and staff. A better solution was needed; one that leveraged the power of AI to simplify the vast content on the site and help users find answers to their questions.
An Online Experience, Built for Residents First
With over 200 services, the complexity and depth of resident questions could not be addressed with site navigation alone. The Kawartha Lakes team considered chatbots to address the problem, but user feedback showed resistance. Chatbots often come with a reputation for being frustrating or unhelpful. It was critical that the solution be a seamless part of the updated site so it would immediately respond to any new content, making information such as hours of operation or waste and recycling details easy to find.
A Clear Choice
municiPal AI stood out in the procurement process as the right solution because it was purpose-built to help anyone looking to find accurate information, fast. Designed around a search-first experience, it maintains a familiar interface similar to traditional search tools, making it immediately intuitive for residents. It delivers something standard search cannot: direct, plain language answers generated from the municipality’s own content. Dual search functionality, which includes both traditional and AI search results, lets residents remain in control of their online experience.
Its in-panel search draws exclusively from existing, controlled website content, creating a closed-loop system that ensures responses are grounded in accurate and up-to-date municipal information rather than external sources or scripted chatbot flows. The system maintains a 97 percent accuracy rating across municipal content, reinforcing confidence in both the reliability of the answers and the integrity of the experience.
Real Results, Clear Impact
When the new website went live, municiPal AI quickly became the standout feature, transforming the site from a static collection of pages into a dynamic, searchable resource.
For residents, the impact is already clear:
municiPal AI has helped improve operational efficiencies as well. Staff who previously relied on external search engines and manual website navigation can now find accurate information instantly by asking municiPal AI, streamlining internal workflows and reducing time spent hunting for answers.
“Our new website continues to deliver what users asked for – a smarter search experience that makes finding information effortless. Whether your organization is just beginning to explore AI or already deep into a website project, the municiPal team is a trusted partner. They manage the implementation with care, ensuring the security and safeguards your IT, risk, and legal teams expect.”
Cheri Davidson
Manager of Communications, Advertising and Marketing, City of Kawartha Lakes
The Next Phase: Council Minutes and Records
With website search already surpassing previous performance metrics, the next phase of the partnership between Kawartha Lakes and municiPal AI adds eScribe integration. This allows users to ask natural language questions and receive answers drawn directly from council agendas, reports, minutes, resolutions, and policy documents. The AI-powered tool gives fast access to thousands of frequently searched documents, helping residents, staff, the business community, and the media navigate complex systems to find relevant information easily and transparently.
Solving A Big-Picture Problem
A website rebuild alone does not solve the underlying challenge of helping residents find the information they need. Even the most well organized sites can be difficult to navigate, simplifying the experience remains daunting.
municiPal takes the burden off the user. Instead of requiring residents to search, click, and interpret, municiPal AI delivers clear, accurate answers drawn from trusted, controlled content. The result is a more effective way to connect residents with services and communicate with your community.
Is municiPal AI right for you?
If helping residents find answers quickly is a challenge in your community, municiPal AI can help. Designed to scale across departments and communities, it delivers consistent, reliable answers for residents and staff, no matter the size or complexity of your municipality.