Advancing Austin’s Open Government Commitments

Over the past year the City of Austin and its partners have advanced Austin’s 2024–2028 Open Government Partnership (OGP) Action Plan, including work focused on responsible artificial intelligence and adapting City operations to a changing climate.

Both efforts have emphasized collaboration and learning: testing new approaches with community and City partners, gathering feedback, and using what we learn to strengthen the work. As these projects move from initial engagement and piloting toward their next phases, independent monitoring provides an important opportunity to assess progress, identify gaps, and improve how the City implements and communicates its commitments.

AI Accountability: Community in the Loop

The City partnered with community and research organizations to host three Community in the Loop training and listening sessions as part of Austin’s commitment to co-create an AI Accountability Framework. The sessions were designed to help Austin residents better understand artificial intelligence, learn how the City is approaching its use, and provide input on how City-employed AI tools should be governed.

Each session combined an overview of the City’s AI work, an accessible “AI 101” training, and a facilitated community listening session. Austin Budget and Organizational Excellence provided context on the City’s work; AI educator Maurie Beasley, founder of AI Ed Pro and a board member of the Austin AI Alliance, led the AI training; and Meme Styles, founder of Measure and a board member of the Austin AI Alliance, facilitated the community conversations.

Across the three sessions, approximately 117 residents participated and provided feedback. The sessions were an early step in a longer process of developing an approach to assessing, monitoring, and addressing potential bias, error, and misuse in AI tools used by the City.

Community in the Loop was a collaborative effort involving the City of Austin, Measure, and the Austin AI Alliance. Importantly, the resulting community report and recommendations were independently developed and written by Measure, drawing on what the organization heard from participants during the listening sessions. The recommendations are therefore community-informed recommendations from Measure rather than adopted City policy. They provide an important source of input as the City considers the next phase of its AI accountability work.

Climate Adaptation: Operationalizing Climate Resilience

The City also completed the first phase of Operationalizing Climate Resilience at the City of Austin (OCRA) - a step toward fulfilling Austin’s OGP commitment to develop a future-focused process for adapting City operations.

From August 2025 through February 2026, Austin Budget and Organizational Excellence and Austin Climate Action and Resilience partnered with the Centre for Public Impact (CPI) and six City departments: Austin Energy, Austin Parks and Recreation, Austin Resource Recovery, Austin Transportation and Public Works, Austin Water, and Austin Watershed Protection on the OCRA project.

The six-month project sought to co-design and pilot a practical approach for incorporating climate projections, future risks, and uncertainty into routine department operations and budget planning. The team conducted a literature review and 13 small-group interviews, convened a validation workshop with 27 City staff from nine departments and two local academic institutions, developed an OCRA guidebook, and tested the approach through a seven-week departmental sprint.

Participating departments applied the process to real operational challenges, including energy load forecasting, extreme-heat impacts on employees, bridge and culvert resilience, future water demand, emergency staffing readiness, and cross-divisional coordination. The pilot strengthened shared understanding of systemic barriers, built skills for planning under uncertainty, and demonstrated the value of cross-department collaboration. It also produced a second iteration of the OCRA guidebook, practical use cases, and a strategy for continuing and scaling the work.

The independent Monitoring Body recognized OCRA as a promising step toward translating Austin’s climate commitments into operational practice while also calling for greater specificity and more regular, publicly available reporting on progress, participation, challenges, and results.

Learning, Accountability, and What Comes Next

Austin’s participation in OGP is intended not only to produce projects, but to strengthen transparency, public participation, and accountability in how those projects are developed and implemented. Independent monitoring is an essential part of that process.

We are grateful to the Austin Community College Center for Government and Civic Service OGP Monitoring Body for the time, care, and independence its student researchers have brought to reviewing Austin’s commitments. Their assessment recognizes the work underway while also identifying areas where the City can improve, including the need for more accessible information, clearer definitions, stronger community feedback mechanisms, and greater visibility into progress over time.

We welcome those recommendations and see them as an important input into the next phase of the work. In particular, we recognize the opportunity to strengthen the cadence, consistency, and public visibility of project reporting so that residents and the Monitoring Body can more easily understand what has been completed, what remains underway, what challenges have emerged, and how feedback is shaping subsequent work.

The Monitoring Body’s assessment below offers an independent perspective on the City’s progress to date and recommendations for strengthening these commitments moving forward.