The Next Big Leap in AI is a Government That Works!

Authored by Leila Banijamali, Symbium CEO

From Instant Permitting to a New Vision

In a California city earlier this year, a homeowner received a solar installation permit in under 30 seconds — a process that typically takes weeks or months of paperwork, painful revisions, and waiting. This was made possible because of Symbium. Symbium has been adopted by dozens of local governments to instantly approve permits for solar and other energy-saving projects (Symbium Instant Permitting). It’s a glimpse of what’s possible when we bring cutting-edge technology to the creaky processes of government. But that success story is just one narrow example. Zoom out, and you see a bigger truth: the public’s experience of government is broken, stuck in a bygone era, ripe for reimagining.

Stuck in the Past: The Broken Government Experience

Think about any time you’ve had to deal with a government process — it can feel like time travel to the last century. Permitting a home renovation means poring over arcane codes and paper forms. A trip to the DMV for a license renewal can burn half a day in line. Paying property taxes or figuring out a new city ordinance might involve navigating websites that look straight out of the 90s. Even checking if something is allowed — say you want to build an affordable, low-carbon ADU or start a home business — often means deciphering jargon or hiring an expert to do a “feasibility check.” The pattern is the same across permitting, licensing, taxes, and countless services: outdated information systems, complex rules, confusing steps, and lots of waiting.

While AI tools like GPTs can help navigate this bureaucratic maze, they remain imperfect guides–prone to errors and outdated information that make them unsuitable for critical applications like building codes or architectural plans where precision isn’t just preferred, it’s legally required. Citizens and professionals alike find themselves caught between antiquated government systems and emerging technologies that promise efficiency but can’t yet deliver the reliability needed for high-stakes compliance work.

The result? Frustration and wasted time on a massive scale. One analysis found that Americans spend a staggering 7.9 billion hours every year on tax paperwork alone. In total, compliance with federal paperwork consumes over 12 billion hours annually — the equivalent of millions of people working full-time just to wrestle with forms and regulations. If that sounds absurd, that’s because it is. In an age when I can ask my phone for instant driving directions or order groceries with a tap, why does engaging with the government feel like using a paper map in a GPS world? Why are we tolerating a dial-up modem level of service in an era of fiber-optic speed?

From Paperwork to Instant Answers: AI as the Necessary Leap

The good news is we don’t have to tolerate it. The next big leap in technology — and the next frontier for AI — is to make government as easy to navigate as the rest of our digital lives. This isn’t about the flashy kind of AI that generates poems or drives cars. It’s about a down-to-earth, deductive AI that can instantly answer questions and guide you through rules based on the law itself. Think of it as a supercharged digital civil servant: you ask a question like “Can I build this addition on my house?” and it generates a reliable, factual answer, complete with citations to the law. No guessing, no misinformation — just the exact analysis against the applicable rules with 100% accuracy and in plain language.

This is a fundamentally different approach from the predictive text AI that often grabs headlines. For certain types of actions where 100% accuracy is imperative (like building a house, insurance, financial services, we don’t need an AI to guess what might be allowed; we need an AI that can deduce what is allowed, with the rigor of a perfect lawyer and the speed of a fast browser. In other words, we need AI that’s as trustworthy and precise as a calculator, but for legal and procedural questions. The technology to do this is already here. In our own work, we’ve seen that by encoding regulations into machine-readable rules, an AI system can instantly determine if a project is compliant, or what permits are required, or what steps a citizen must take. It’s like moving from dial-up to broadband in terms of speed, and from a maze of manuals to a friendly guide in terms of user experience. We can shift from a world where every citizen must become a mini-bureaucrat to get things done, to one where the heavy lifting is done by AI in the background — and the answers we need appear faster than a GPT search.

Don’t miss the point — there is certainly room for predictive AI in many facets of our lives, especially when it comes to discretionary analyses (I.e. “produce an output that has the same general look and feel as X”, being a common prompt). Government possesses a wealth of data, though it is often difficult to locate, standardize, and structure. This untapped information holds immense potential for creating innovative products and delivering valuable solutions.

A New Public Infrastructure Moment

Achieving a truly responsive, AI-powered government experience isn’t just a nifty upgrade — it’s a transformative infrastructure project for society. Think of the grand leaps of the past: the interstate highway system knit the country together and fueled commerce; rural electrification brought power to millions and unlocked productivity; the internet (born from government research) connected us in ways unimaginable before. Bringing government services into the 21st century through AI has that kind of sweeping potential. It would be a foundation that supports everything else — a web of connected platforms with which we can tackle big challenges like climate, housing, and economic growth far more effectively.

Why do I say this leap is bigger than just clean energy or housing? Because a government that works smoothly enables all those goals. Want to accelerate clean energy adoption? Make the permit process across all of those projects instantaneous and painless. Want more housing? Streamline the zoning and building approvals that today can take years. Want to encourage entrepreneurship? Let someone incorporate a business, obtain licenses, and understand their tax obligations in a single morning from their kitchen table. Modernizing the “plumbing” of governance can unlock progress on countless fronts. It’s a force multiplier for the public good, akin to how highways boosted commerce or how electrification improved every aspect of our lives.

Beyond Piecemeal Fixes: Toward a Holistic Experience of Government Relationship Management

We’re already seeing glimmers of what’s possible, but also the limitations of doing things in a piecemeal, anticompetitive way. For example, SolarAPP+–the automated solar permitting platform–began as an interesting idea, likely driven by well-intentioned participants hoping to streamline permitting processes. But its deployment through solution-specific legislation like California’s SB 379 (mandating a jurisdiction to adopt SolarAPP+ or something that does what SolarAPP+ does (?!)) and Maryland’s Brighter Tomorrow Act (any automated solar permitting solution can be adopted by local gov but only jurisdictions that adopt SolarAPP+ will qualify for grant funding from the State of MD) quickly devolved into regulatory capture, stifling competition and innovation rather than encouraging it. This kind of narrowly targeted, anti-competitive approach exemplifies exactly what society should be rejecting if we want genuine progress in modernizing government services. There are thousands of such problems in the machinery of government but none as egregious as the SolarAPP+ laws that have been emerging in recent years — first in California and Maryland, then attempted (and often failed as anticompetitive) in other states. Attempting to achieve ambitious climate or housing targets by developing individual applications for each permit, license, and public service — then mandating their use through legislation — is a recipe for failure. This fragmented approach guarantees bureaucratic resistance, citizen frustration, and ultimately the very opposite of the streamlined adoption these goals require

Instead of a fragmented approach, we need to think bigger: a holistic approach to government relationship management or “GRM”. It might be unrealistic to assume that a single system will force adoption everywhere by every government and member of the public. Imagine a connected set of systems that could handle virtually any rule or compliance question, from building a deck to registering a food truck to paying your property taxes. Rather than juggling dozens of websites and offices, citizens could have integrated portals to interface with — a kind of civic operating system. This doesn’t mean one monolithic program runs everything, but rather interoperable, extensible platforms, much like a smartphone can host countless apps. Today, you don’t carry a separate device for maps, camera, and email; your phone is a single platform for all. In the same way, the government of the future could be accessed through a unified gateways that tap into all the relevant rules and services behind the scenes. The key is setting common standards and infrastructure so that whether you’re dealing with City Hall or the IRS, the experience is consistently straightforward.

Crucially, this interconnected connected platform approach would ensure consistency and fairness. Everyone would get the same answers from the same knowledge base of laws, rather than the luck of which official or which office you happened to get. It could dramatically reduce errors and eliminate the need for “insider” know-how to get things done. When done right, it also frees up human public servants to focus on the tougher, human-centered cases instead of rubber-stamping forms all day. It’s government that works smarter, so public employees and the public alike benefit.

Building a 21st Century Government — What’s Required?

Making this vision a reality is an ambitious task — but it’s also an urgent and achievable one. The technology pieces are falling into place, from advanced AI and natural language interfaces to cloud computing and secure digital ID systems. Private sector innovation has shown what’s possible, and some forward-thinking governments have piloted digital transformations in bits and pieces. What we need now is a bold, collective push to treat this as a priority on par with building a bridge or fixing the power grid. It’s time for policymakers to invest in modernizing the civic infrastructure that is the government’s interface with its people. It’s time for the public to demand that convenience and efficiency aren’t luxuries in the private sector alone — they should be our baseline expectation for public services.

This isn’t a partisan issue; everyone, across the political spectrum, gets equally frustrated by the DMV or baffled by bureaucratic red tape. Streamlining government is a pro-growth, pro-society move that transcends politics. And it need not be a wild goose chase: we’re not talking about some sci-fi scenario of government by robot overlords. We’re talking about very real, concrete improvements — essentially upgrading our experience of government — putting more control and agency into the hands of the public. At a high level, this upgraded experience requires:

1. Complaw®-powered systems. Rather than forcing citizens to interpret complex legal text, regulations should be encoded as executable computer programs that operate seamlessly at the point of interaction. Machine-readable regulations will eventually enable anyone to build compliant systems.
2. A user-centered approach to government. The user experience (UX) of government services must prioritize citizen experience over bureaucratic convenience, treating each interaction as an opportunity to build trust and encourage engagement, rather than create friction. A thoughtful UX will accomplish clarity, efficiency and speed, accessibility, equity, transparency, proactive service delivery, and trust.
3. Identifying the most appropriate technology, driven by the problem’s requirements, not trends. Implementation approach comes last by design — we should determine whether generative AI, rule-based systems, or other solutions best serve each specific use case, rather than retrofitting popular technologies into inappropriate applications.

Above all, we must maintain an optimistic urgency. The longer we accept a status quo of complexity and inefficiency, the more we squander opportunities — whether that’s a family building an addition to house a grandparent, or a small business trying to open its doors. We should be shouting from the rooftops that we deserve better. Our message to leaders: build a government experience truly worthy of the 21st century. Fund the digital infrastructure, pass smart policies that encourage AI adoption for public good, and hold agencies accountable for user-friendly services. And to the private sector and technologists: keep innovating in ways that can partner with the government and scale these solutions safely and responsibly.

The next big leap in AI isn’t about fancy gadgets or dystopian fears — it’s about unlocking a functional, friendly, and fast government. It’s about using intelligence to make bureaucracy invisible and efficient, the way it should be. Like the great public works of history, this leap will require vision and effort, but the payoff will echo for decades: a society where interacting with our government is as easy as opening an app, and where our collective energy is spent on building and creating rather than waiting and complying. It’s time to demand this vision, and time to build it. A government that truly works for its people in real time isn’t a tech fantasy — it’s a public necessity. Let’s make it happen.

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About Symbium

Symbium is the leader in automated compliance checks for instant or accelerated permit issuance across a range of project types in the housing and energy saving space. The company partners with local building departments to enable instant permitting, which is used by high volume and independent installers everywhere. Symbium is currently a resident at Autodesk and has achieved significant recognition and growth as a proud portfolio company of climate impact leaders such as Elemental Impact and RMI’s Third Derivative. The company continues to receive numerous awards for its breakthrough tech and success with instant permitting from the Association for Corporate Growth, GovTech 100, the ALP Alain Colmerauer Heritage Prize, the Ivory Prize, BuiltWorlds Maverick, and the Hive 50.

contact: press@symbium.com