West Palm Beach to use AI on public-records requests under Knight partnership
A year-long Knight Cities Challenge partnership will bring Caldera’s Mesa AI platform to West Palm Beach public-records work, beginning with the city’s IT and Police departments.
Key Takeaways
- •The City says the one-year partnership will initially involve its Information Technology and Police departments.
- •Mesa is intended to assist with intake, review, redaction and release, with trained City staff retaining oversight.
- •The announcement does not disclose West Palm Beach’s award amount, deployment schedule or measured local results.
West Palm Beach plans to use an artificial-intelligence platform to help process public-records requests under a year-long partnership with Caldera PBC, announced Oct. 22 as part of the Knight Cities Challenge. The City says its Information Technology and Police departments will be the first to use the company’s Mesa platform.
The City and Caldera were selected as partners in the 2026 challenge. The City’s release says the award will fund one year of work, but it does not state West Palm Beach’s individual award amount.
The planned workflow covers the life of a request, from intake and review through redaction and release. The City says Mesa will help identify records that respond to a request and prepare them for release under Florida public-records law and applicable exemptions.
Trained City personnel will retain oversight, according to the City’s announcement. The release describes a planned deployment, not a completed change to the city’s records service.
That distinction matters for residents, journalists and businesses seeking government records. The partnership could change how staff handle parts of the request process, but the public announcement includes no local measurements of response times, backlog size, accuracy, cost or staff hours saved.
The foundation’s challenge page lists Caldera’s “Public Records Without the Backlog” project in both West Palm Beach and Duluth, Minnesota. The listing describes a platform intended to improve government transparency and reduce staff burden; it does not provide West Palm Beach implementation results.
The City also did not give a public launch date or explain how it will evaluate the partnership. Those details, along with any locally measured changes in request processing, will show what the year-long project delivers beyond its announced scope.
Photo: City Hall, West Palm Beach, Florida by Sharon Hahn Darlin, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY 2.0; processed.
