A new option to find the City information you are looking for has arrived. CoBy, the City’s first AI-powered digital assistant, can be found on the City’s website, burlington.ca.

This customer service enhancement provides 24/7 access to a wealth of city information and services. With a simple click, residents, businesses, and visitors can pose questions and receive real-time, AI-generated responses, based on the extensive knowledge gathered from burlington.ca.

CoBy is not just a digital assistant, it is an ever-evolving digital entity, designed to learn, adapt, and improve from every interaction, ensuring an enriched user experience.

The City of Burlington is one of the first municipalities in Canada to launch a generative AI digital assistant, created with Microsoft Copilot Studio. We want to hear about your experiences using CoBy.

How CoBy works

Web users will find a welcoming green conversation bubble icon in the bottom right-hand corner of every web page on burlington.ca. Users can click the icon and enter a question for CoBy about the city. The digital assistant then uses Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT) technology to quickly and efficiently provide the information requested.

The new digital assistant is currently in the beta phase of development, ready for testing. CoBy will continue to develop over time, influenced by the customer requests it receives, patterns learned through generative AI, and the addition of new data sources on the City’s website and beyond. Users can provide feedback on their experience with CoBy at getinvolvedburlington.ca/digitaltransformation.

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Quick Facts

The digital assistant initiative is connected to the City’s four-year work plan called Burlington’s Plan from Vision to Focus 2022-2026 through two areas of focus - providing the best services and experiences and driving organizational performance. Key objectives for these areas include:

• Creating a positive customer and staff experience every time
• Expanding and enhancing opportunities to engage, listen and respond to our community
• Being proactive to our growing and changing community needs
• Prioritizing projects and initiatives to optimize City staff and technology resources
• Efficient and effective service delivery
• Being agile and innovative to inspire people, streamline processes, and leverage technology

The City of Burlington is undertaking a pilot program to accelerate the permitting process for industrial-commercial buildings. Burlington is the second city in Canada to use this technology to improve its permitting process and make it easier to build in Burlington. Burlington is also the first city in Canada to use the technology specifically for development on employment lands.

How it works

Using innovative AI-powered technology, the platform used in the pilot digitizes the rules in Burlington’s zoning bylaws, relating to industrial-commercial buildings. Once applicants have submitted a proposed design, the platform automatically evaluates the design’s compliance against the relevant rules. The solution checks to ensure requirements are met for things such as setbacks, heights, floor area ratios, landscape areas and parking ratios.

The digital tool also generates a comprehensive compliance report which is available to the applicant immediately. The report gives applicants a summary of which aspects of the design have passed or failed, as well as details about how the design complies with each zoning bylaw rule.

The AI-powered technology’s ability to review designs quickly and efficiently provides value to the City, customers, and staff, including:

• Saved time, by reducing the number of manual exchanges between applicants and City staff
• Allowing applicants to have immediate feedback on proposals and allowing for modifications prior to submission
• Faster approvals and turnaround time on issuing building permits
• Shortened design time
• Higher quality of design submissions
• Financial savings on the cost of multiple design revisions
• Enhanced transparency about the City of Burlington’s development review process

The pilot began in late July and will conclude by the end of 2023. The objective of the pilot is to provide essential data on the value such a tool may provide for Burlington in accomplishing our stated organizational goals related to housing.

The platform can also be used to check design compliance on all forms of development. While this option is not currently part of the pilot, applicants can pick a specific site, upload their design to the platform and immediately see a 3D visualization which allows users to assess whether their design meets the rules.

Next steps after the pilot may include further pilots or a larger-scale rollout.