Municipal Track

Municipalities across Canada

Shadow AI The compliance gap hiding in plain sight

48%

of public servants are already using AI tools on the job

22%

of organizations have a formal AI adoption policy in place

50%

of those AI users rely on publicly available tools — ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot

85%

of Canadians lack confidence in how the public service will develop and use AI

2025 KPMG Canada survey of 349 public servants, "Half of public servants turn to AI, raising risks" — co-published with Microsoft

Alberta municipalities: ATIA & POPA Privacy Management Program deadline — June 11, 2026

Nearly half of your staff are probably already using AI — right now, today, without a policy, without training, and without knowing what happens to the data they enter.

Half of them are using publicly available tools. ChatGPT. Gemini. Copilot. Tools that were not built for municipal government and offer no guarantees about where your data goes.

This is Shadow AI. It is not a future risk. It is a present one — and provincial privacy legislation has a deadline attached.

An existing IT acceptable use policy does not satisfy the Privacy Management Program requirements under ATIA or POPA. These are distinct obligations. SMC’s Municipal Framework addresses both.

AI Readiness Assessment

Know exactly where your compliance risk is — before your auditor does.

Before spending a dollar on AI, and before your next privacy review, you need to know where you actually stand. SMC conducts a structured diagnostic of your municipality’s current workflows, data practices, and staff AI usage. We surface your Shadow AI exposure: which tools your staff are already using, what information may be at risk, and where your policy gaps are.

Then we identify where AI can save your team the most time, and deliver a plain-language roadmap your council can understand and approve. Delivered remotely, with minimal demands on your team’s time.

Start Here

Staff AI Training & Prompt Engineering

Turn your team from a compliance liability into your municipality’s most effective AI users.

83% of Canadian employees want to use AI better. Only 48% say their employer gave them what they needed to get there.

In a municipality, that gap is more than a productivity issue. A staff member who enters ratepayer personal information into a public AI tool isn’t just making a mistake — they may be triggering a reportable privacy breach under your province’s legislation. And with 85% of Canadians already lacking confidence in how the public service uses AI, one incident can become a council issue fast.

SMC’s training covers both sides of the problem: what your staff are and are not allowed to use AI for, how to handle personal information safely — and how to get genuinely useful output so staff actually use the sanctioned tools well.

Available remotely or on-site. No jargon. Skills your team uses the next day.

Foundation

AI Policy Development

A formal AI policy your council can adopt, your staff can follow.

Having staff trained on responsible AI use is necessary. Having a written policy they can refer to — and that your municipality can demonstrate to provincial oversight bodies — is what closes the compliance gap entirely.

SMC drafts your AI Acceptable Use Policy from the ground up: plain language, grounded in ATIA and POPA requirements, and written so that a CAO with five other files can actually implement it. The policy covers sanctioned tools, prohibited uses, data handling requirements, breach reporting obligations, and staff expectations. Pricing on request.

Compliance

Private LLM Deployment

A powerful AI tool your staff can actually use — without touching a public platform.

Your staff need an alternative. Without one, telling them to stop using ChatGPT just means they use it more carefully — which isn’t the same as not using it.

SMC deploys a private AI instance scoped entirely to your municipality. Your data stays within your systems, under your control, subject to your provincial privacy obligations. Your staff get a sanctioned, capable AI tool to use instead of the public ones — one that your municipality controls completely. No public cloud exposure. No IT department required to maintain it.

Data sovereignty ATIA / POPA compliant architecture Infrastructure

Agentic AI What Canadian organizations are saying

88%

say Agentic AI is critical for keeping their competitive edge and driving productivity

92%

believe Agentic AI will help achieve cost savings and increase efficiency

89%

say Agentic AI will help address labour gaps in their organization

69%

are concerned about Agentic AI cutting the human out of the loop — SMC designs human oversight in from the start

KPMG in Canada, “Canadian organizations turning to AI agents: KPMG poll,” April 2025

Agentic Workflows

Stop spending staff hours on tasks AI can complete in seconds.

SMC builds municipal agentic workflows with human oversight designed in from the start — not added as an afterthought. Your staff don’t get replaced. They get relieved of the administrative burden that prevents them from doing the work that actually requires a human.

Workflows we automate for municipalities: meeting minutes and council agendas, bylaw drafting, permit correspondence, report generation, ratepayer communications, onboarding documentation, and more. Every workflow is privacy-by-design.

Privacy-by-design Transformation

Your staff are using AI.
Your policy isn’t ready.

Ready to close your compliance gap?

Your staff are using AI.Your policy isn’t ready.

Ready to close your compliance gap?

Your staff are using AI.
Your policy isn’t ready.