The Local Government Everyone Is Asking About

What does it look like when a city council takes both AI and community engagement seriously — without making either feel like a corporate strategy exercise? In this episode, I talk with Jared Griffith, a senior leader at Hutt City Council in Greater Wellington, New Zealand. This conversation follows a chat Jared and I had when I was in Wellington a few months ago, where I became really intrigued by two things Hutt City Council is working on. First, they’ve launched a new community engagement strategy grounded much more deeply in local Indigenous ways of knowing and doing. We talk about what that changes, how it shifts the relationship between council and community, and what it means to engage people with more care and depth. Second, we get into AI. Hutt City Council has become something of a reference point for other municipalities trying to adopt AI well. And, unsurprisingly, the secret is not really the technology. It is people. This is a conversation about trust, culture, public service, and what it takes to change how local government works in practice. And yes, I push Jared a bit too.