Josh Penner for Inquisio.AI

Building the AI-Powered Solution to Solve Government’s Information Problem

Make Hay While the Sun Shines!

I don't suppose a Thanksgiving update will make much sense, but be assured we'll be building through the holiday break. I’ll have to make this update good enough for two weeks! I think it is. Let me know what you think.

See below for updates, progress, an ask, and some really cool data on a really really really tough problem we’re taking on!

~Josh
CEO, Inquisio.AI

Letters of Interest & support: 9
Communities engaged: 38

I'm in Atlanta through Saturday at the National League of Cities. Reach out to me if you are in the area and want to connect. Reach out to me if you're building something related to the public sector and want to collaborate. Reach out to me just to say "hi." All are welcomed and appropriate things to reach out to me for.



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I had the opportunity to join Matt Brown on his "Secrets of Influence" series in his Matt Brown Podcast. The podcast episode should be out at the end of this week. Here's a link. Listen in if you want to hear how executive thought works in the public space, and how we're integrating it into our startup at Inquisio as well.




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We’ve been in full engagement mode. Thought you might like to see a visual map of where we’ve been talking to cities, towns, counties, and adjacent agencies.



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In between meetings and building this amazing company, I got to watch my city’s newest police officer graduate the Basic Law Enforcement Academy. If you know how hard it’s been to recruit officers the last couple years, you know why I’m so happy this week. Here’s MY take on why being a police officer is so special.

We're super excited to introduce you to our new team member, Keith Newham.



Keith is going to be an anchor for our development team. His background in software development, project management, and software leadership will help us continue to rapidly respond to initial customer insights while facilitating scalable solutions. Connect with Keith, please!

Does this sound like your problem? We’re continuing to meet with cities, counties, and other agencies every day. These are the things we’re hearing. But are they accurate for you? Will you help us refine how we tell folks what we do. If so, read this short description of Inquisio Lens - the software we’re working to release in the near future - starting with our pilot partners.

Give them Superpowers.

10% of your staff is dedicated to managing and researching records and finding other information!

Inquisio’s Lens is the solution to the public sector’s information problem. Your staff can’t find information fast enough. Citizens and regulators demand access and transparency.

From the biggest to the smallest cities, counties, and other public agencies, the inability to find, manage, retain, and quickly reproduce essential data results in unnecessary expenses in the form of redundancies, overwork, and risk-filled results.

💪 Inquisio Lens makes your staff superheroes of your agency’s data.
💪 Inquisio Lens creates access while costing your staff less time and expenses.

Inquisio Lens Superpowers:

✅  Enable the public to find and understand critical documents in natural language.
✅  Search for files with a question and not a keyword.
✅  Perform policy and historical document research with powerful summarization and citation tools.
✅  Multi-lingual document and data interaction for the public without hiring translators.
✅  Meeting minutes auto-generation and transcription, with identification of records requests.
✅  Speed up access and transparency for Financial, Building, Planning, Economic Development, Legal, Ordinances, Resolutions, Agency Code, and other essential information.

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Just a short snippet of feedback by responding to this email is great. Nothing in depth needed. And let us know if you want to know more about the pilot partner program.

Not an update, but I think you’ll find this VERY interesting.. or very stressful depending on your role in your organization.

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The JLARC Website from Washington State provides excellent insight into the scale of the information problem facing local governments.

In WA state (not US wide) 2,452 Washington agencies are subject to the Public Records Act.

Of those the top 215 agencies reported receiving a total of 357,075 records requests in 2021.

Those agencies closed 185,196 of those requests ( 52% closure rate )

Those agencies averaged 20 days to complete a records request. ( 3,703,920 total days dedicated to the requests that were fulfilled )

Those agenceis spent $100m responding to the requests ( $600 per information request fulfilled )



Take a look at Lewis County (source below). A county of ~85k constituents. For context, 15 individual cities in WA state have a greater population than Lewis County. On any given day in 2021, clerical staff walked into work at Lewis County with a back log of ~265 records in queue. Each of those records taking on average 20 days to complete. And each of those costing the agency ~$600 per record (some math here is ~5-6 hours of staff time).



This is one county, in one state, pulled for example purposes and not because they are exceptional (re: information requests) in any particular way that we’re aware of.

Local government’s information problem is fantastically expensive.

This is where why our passion burns to solve this problem.