Austin Community College Students Monitor Austin’s Commitments on Open Government

By the ACC Center for Government and Civic Service OGP Monitoring Body

What does it look like when community college students monitor the progress of a major American city in fulfilling its obligations concerning an international program? For the past year and a half, students at Austin Community College's (ACC) Center for Government and Civic Service (CGCS) have been finding out what local government really looks like from the inside — and what we've discovered is an incredible way to enable young adults to learn about local government while performing a valuable service.

The City of Austin is one of roughly 150 subnational governments participating in the Open Government Partnership (OGP), an international initiative that asks cities and states to make concrete, verifiable commitments to transparency, civic participation, and accountability. Austin's current 2024–2028 Action Plan centers on three ambitious commitments: building an ethical framework for Artificial Intelligence, adapting city operations to climate change, and strengthening economic opportunity. At the request of the City of Austin, the CGCS established an independent monitoring body, led and composed of students, evaluating the city’s efforts in these areas.

What We Set Out To Do

Our role was modeled on the OGP's "IRM in a Box" framework, which calls for monitoring bodies to operate with independence, objectivity, and a results-oriented focus. In practice, that meant our student researchers — organized into subcommittees on AI Accountability, Climate and Sustainability, and Economic Resilience — conducted interviews with city officials and citizens, analyzed policy documents, reviewed public data dashboards, and tracked progress against the milestones the city itself had committed to.

We came in with varying levels of cynicism and optimism. What we have developed is a more nuanced and complex appreciation for the challenges of local government. Our assessment is ongoing.

Three Commitments, Three Honest Assessments

AI Accountability

On AI Accountability, the city has established a clear ethical direction — Resolution 55 prohibits real-time surveillance and mandates annual audits — and has launched the Community in the Loop series to gather public input. The three sessions engaged approximately 117 Austin residents who attended an AI 101 workshop, received information on how the city is currently using AI, and had the opportunity to provide feedback on four aspects of AI governance: community, advocacy, resilience, and evidence. Now, the city is planning to use the data gathered to inform the development of the “accountability framework” detailed in the commitment.

However, the gap between ambition and capacity is still noticeable. The progress led by the Austin Budget and Organizational Excellence (BOE) on OGP’s AI transparency is the first of its kind in Austin, and precisely for its impact, every step is critical in building the right procedures to safeguard Austin residents from undefined and unprotected AI integration in local governance.

As far as we can determine, BOE and the Emerging Technology Board are the only bodies within the city attempting to centralize internal procedures on AI use that could guide the steps for public-facing tools. At the moment, the framework remains undefined in practical terms: what exactly constitutes "accountability" in Austin's context has yet to be made concrete in the following steps carried out by the city. Until those definitions exist, community members — particularly those most vulnerable to algorithmic bias in areas like hiring, healthcare, or credit — have limited tools to seek redress. At the same time, the monitoring body has witnessed the effort in driving structural change, but we consider that the balance between ambition and capacity is critical to build a realistic and effective framework.

Recommendation: We recommend continuing to gather data from the community and increasing the number of residents reached in these events, in particular considering the targeted Hispanic population of the second session was not reached. We recommend finding time to make either a Community in the Loop series event every two months, or having a centralized and permanent form where community members can provide feedback regarding local government AI use.

Ideally, the monitoring body considers engaging with a number close to 300 people by the end of the year, whether it is through an in-person event, virtual, or surveys, is a realistic and good precedent to inform the first phase of the framework. In the long term, gathering community feedback should be a continued practice that informs the City’s AI decisions even after the framework has been built and implemented.

Climate Sustainability

On Climate Sustainability, the city has faced several implementation challenges over the past year and a half; however, it has shown promise through its Operation Climate Resilience Austin (OCRA) Project.

Conversations with city officials revealed that budget cuts, changing administrations, and broader state dynamics have narrowed what was achievable under Climate Sustainability’s milestones. The officials weren’t making excuses; they were recalibrating in real time. The city is doing what it can: prioritizing renewable energy, maintaining commitments against new coal, and promoting the value of sustainability within the local community.

Furthermore, the city’s recent efforts to close the gap between paper and action with OCRA include its approach to implementing climate-based scenarios into routine operations and budget planning. OCRA is the first step of many that the Monitoring Body is interested in reviewing from the city: we hope to see further specificity in the city’s actions to address the impacts of climate on Austin effectively.

Recommendation: To strengthen accountability and support effective oversight, the monitoring body recommends that the City provide regular, publicly available reports detailing its internal progress with OCRA and future Climate Sustainability commitment areas. These reports should include quantitative performance data, documentation of stakeholder engagement and participation throughout the implementation process, and updates on the internal actions, milestones, and decision-making that advance each commitment.

Additionally, the reports should transparently identify any challenges, barriers, or setbacks encountered during implementation, along with an assessment of their implications and the strategies being employed to address them. Consistent reporting to both the public and the monitoring body will enhance transparency and facilitate ongoing monitoring of the City’s progress toward achieving its climate resilience goals.

Economic Resilience

On Economic Resilience, progress has been the hardest to track — in part because, for much of the past year, we were unable to locate a dedicated city lead for this commitment. The Economic Resilience Lab and Action Team referenced in official documents proved difficult to locate in practice.

There are signs of forward motion: a FUSE Fellow was hired, and a dedicated coordinator for cross-sector efforts is reporting to the City Manager. The monitoring body met with the Small Business Division, whose work on developing resources for small businesses is ongoing. 2026 initiatives, such as the release of Austin’s "Levers of Economic Mobility Index (LEMI)" and the 2026 Fair Housing & Economic Mobility Conference, suggest demonstrable efforts to assess causal factors of economic disparities and address the goals of the FY25 strategic plan.

But as it stands, the OGP-specific milestones have yet to be clearly connected to the city's broader "One Austin" framework in a way that the public can easily follow, or perhaps feel directly. This lack of visible infrastructure is felt on the ground: small business owners on Austin’s East Side have expressed frustration that the city’s support and resources have not been sufficient to meet their needs.

Recommendation: The body recommends making clear the impact and details of the Economic Resilience Lab - Gap Analysis and Prioritization Screening Tool (the first milestone of the commitment), and either begin, or make apparent, the progress of the creation of the Economic Resilience Action Team, a key second milestone. Communicating these steps to the monitoring body and the public is paramount.

An immense aid toward completing the goals of the commitment area could be to ensure that the tools and teams created in the plan benefit the specific communities identified — small businesses, communities across the Eastern Crescent, Austinites of color, and Austin women (the plan specifies disparities affecting Latina and Black women).

There is a clear benefit for the city to connect the work done in these efforts via initiatives outside of the action plan, such as the FY25 strategic plan and “One Austin” framework, to improvements in the population’s economic prosperity directly targeted in the commitment Inception Report. This connection would make clear the cohesive effort to uplift the community as intended in initiatives like OGP.

What We Took Away

Across all three areas, a consistent picture emerged: good people navigating a genuinely difficult situation that includes the shifting and uncertain posture of the federal government, budget cuts, and city government reorganization. City staff often carry enormous workloads, manage competing priorities, and operate with resources that fall well short of their mandates. OGP, for some, is one of fifteen things on a crowded desk. That's not an excuse — it's context. And context matters if we want to provide honest and useful assessments rather than performative ones.

As student researchers, we arrived at this work without expecting perfection. What we hoped to find was earnest effort, honest data, and a willingness to hear from us. Most of the time, we found that. What we also found was a city whose public-facing ambition has, at times, outpaced its internal capacity to deliver — and that honest gap is exactly what a monitoring body exists to characterize.

Looking Forward

As our team transitions — some members moving on, new researchers joining — we carry forward both the work and the relationships. We expect more from the city in the coming year: more accessible data, clearer definitions, and more transparent reporting on what progress actually looks like on the ground. And we commit, in turn, to continuing to engage seriously, constructively, and with the recognition that building a more open and accountable city is not a season's work.

Our assessment was not that the city lacked effort. Rather, we found a growing disconnect between the scale of Austin’s public-facing goals and the systems currently available to track and communicate measurable progress. The tools, the will, and the talent are present. Our job, and we mean to continue doing it, is to help make sure the follow-through matches the aspiration, and perhaps inspire others to do so as well.

About the Monitoring Body

The ACC Center for Government and Civic Service OGP Monitoring Body includes student researchers from the CGCS working across three initiative subcommittees. The CGCS is directed by Bryan Port and is housed at the ACC Rio Grande Campus.

This article is written and produced by the OGP Monitoring Body: Astrid Perez, Austin Wells, Bryan Port, Diego Cabriales, Eimanie Thomas, Ella Luce, Ethan Sumineg, Gordon L. Ray, Juan Huertas, Marisela Perez Maita, Nicole Leondike, Suyeon Hong, Taylor Fitch, and Tristan Hersey.