State of GovTech 2025: Voices of Civic Innovation

At the recent State of GovTech 2025 event in Arlington, VA—hosted by CivStart—leaders at the cutting edge of public sector innovation came together to share insights, strategies, and bold visions for the future of government technology. The event’s special feature on IBM’s Business of Government Hour brought together three influential voices in GovTech:

• Denise Lynn Riedl, CIO of South Bend, IN

• Chip Kennedy, Founder and CEO of CivicReach

• Tom Spengler, Co-founder of Granicus and CivStart Board Member

Denise Riedl: Designing a Resident-First City Hall

Denise Riedl described South Bend’s new City Hall as a “Swiss Army knife” of civic innovation, with an intentional focus on accessibility and human-centered design.

“We’re trying to make sure that City Hall is a good experience—and that anyone who wants to avoid it can.”

Riedl outlined how South Bend is digitizing payments, forms, and customer service through a redesigned digital team and centralized 311 services. The key? Putting business units and frontline workers in the driver’s seat.

“99 out of 100 times, the frontline workers know what’s wrong—and they’ve already tried to fix it.”

South Bend’s work with generative AI is also rooted in pragmatism. A new internal translation tool helps produce accessible, multilingual documents, but Riedl emphasized:

“AI is never enough. It has to be accompanied by training, good management—and sometimes policy.”

Chip Kennedy: Building Trustworthy AI for Government Calls

Chip Kennedy launched CivicReach to solve a specific problem raised by public officials: “Help us pick up the phone.”

CivicReach uses voice AI to support call-taking in government agencies—automating routine questions so staff can focus on higher-level, proactive service. But Kennedy is clear-eyed about the responsibilities that come with deploying resident-facing AI.

“We might displace jobs—we want to be good stewards of that.”

His team works closely with staff to build trust, adopting an in-person, iterative change management model. As Kennedy put it:

“The technology is easy. What takes longer—and what we want to take longer—is getting a city ready for the change.”

He credits partners like South Bend for modeling effective 311 systems and providing CivicReach a roadmap to emulate for cities without dedicated call centers.

Tom Spengler: Ecosystems, Not Just Startups

As a co-founder of Granicus and a board member at CivStart, Tom Spengler offered historical and strategic context.

“Twenty-five years ago, there was no GovTech ecosystem.”

Today, Spengler helps early-stage startups understand how to navigate government bureaucracy—not just by pitching, but by deeply listening.

“You need to spend hours listening to your customer… then you can propose your solution.”

He shared lessons from Granicus’ early days, including how automating the work of city clerks transformed public meeting records and unlocked new services.

“We didn’t think about that when we started. But once we listened—clerks became the heroes.”

Spengler also spotlighted new tools using AI to detect code violations and automate staff reports, predicting a coming shift in workforce roles:

“With AI, there’s going to be real retraining and reallocating of the workforce into new things.”

Listen to the full conversation here, and stay tuned for more insights from the frontline of digital government transformation.