AI That Cites Its Sources.
Humans Decide the Hard Calls.
The biggest risk with AI in government isn't the AI saying something wrong — it's the AI saying something wrong with authority, and no one realizing it. Civona is designed from the ground up to prevent exactly that.
NYC's MyCity Chatbot:
A Cautionary Tale
In 2024, New York City's MyCity business chatbot was caught advising landlords they could evict tenants for hosting guests — confidently, authoritatively, and wrongly. This is the failure mode Civona is built to prevent.
The chatbot was trained on general data and LLM knowledge — not on NYC's actual legal documents. It hallucinated policy that sounded plausible but was legally incorrect.
Residents act on government information. When an AI gives wrong information with government authority, the municipality carries legal and reputational liability.
Every Civona response is grounded in your municipality's actual documents. No answer is generated from general LLM knowledge — only from verified municipal sources.
“Can I build a fence on my property line?”
Fences in residential zones (R-1 through R-3) may be up to 6 feet in height in rear and side yards, and 4 feet in front yards. Permits are required for fences over 4 feet.
AI Handles Routine.
Humans Handle Judgment.
Not every constituent inquiry should be answered by AI. Civona's routing engine distinguishes between information retrieval (AI-appropriate) and discretionary decisions (human-appropriate) — and escalates accordingly.
- →Hours and location of city services
- →Permit application status checks
- →Utility payment information
- →Zoning and code lookup
- →Event and meeting schedules
- →Document download requests
- →Variance and exception requests
- →Billing dispute resolution
- →Complaint escalations
- →Urgent infrastructure reports
- →Benefits eligibility questions
- →Legal or compliance interpretations
- →Elected official interactions
- →Personnel and HR matters
- →Active litigation or legal matters
- →Emergency or 911-adjacent situations
- →Confidential constituent data
- →Policy decisions requiring discretion
Closet Servers vs. Cloud-Native
Legacy On-Premise / Closet Servers
- ✕Physical servers require on-site maintenance
- ✕No automatic failover — single point of failure
- ✕Ransomware targets: municipalities lost $2.2B in 2023
- ✕Manual backups, often incomplete or untested
- ✕No auto-scaling — capacity fixed at purchase
- ✕Security patching is manual and often delayed
- ✕CISA audit: avg. municipal patching lag is 178 days
Civona Cloud-Native Architecture
- ✓Fully managed cloud infrastructure, zero on-site hardware
- ✓Multi-region redundancy with automatic failover
- ✓Enterprise security: WAF, DDoS protection, threat monitoring
- ✓Continuous automated backups with tested restoration
- ✓Auto-scaling handles demand spikes without intervention
- ✓Security patches deployed automatically and continuously
- ✓Continuous vulnerability scanning and incident response
SOC 2 and GovRAMP:
On the Path, Not Just Promising It
We're honest about where we are. Here is our compliance certification timeline — with specific milestones, not vague commitments.
Your Data Is Yours.
Simple commitments about how Civona handles municipal data.
Data Isolation
Each municipality is a fully isolated tenant. Your constituent data, documents, and AI training is never commingled with another municipality's data.
Encryption
All data encrypted at rest (AES-256) and in transit (TLS 1.3). Encryption keys are municipality-specific.
No AI Training on Your Data
Your municipal data is used to answer your constituents' questions. It is never used to train shared models or improve the platform for other customers.
Data Residency
All data processed and stored within US-based infrastructure. No data leaves US jurisdiction.
Right to Deletion
If you terminate the contract, all your data is deleted within 30 days. We provide a data export in standard formats before deletion.
No Vendor Lock-In
Your existing systems continue working exactly as before if you leave Civona. We are an intelligence layer — not a data silo.
Have Specific Security Questions?
Our technical team answers directly — no sales buffer. Ask us anything.