Automated civic transparency

Every public board.
Every vote. Every dollar.
Searchable by anyone.

MyLocalBoard indexes public meeting records, cross-references budgets against policy mandates, and lets you search your local government in plain language. Try it now.

349
Meetings indexed
2,656
Votes tracked
9,819
Decisions cataloged
72
Budget reports
47
Policy documents
12
Audio transcripts
The pipeline
From public records to public accountability
Once configured for a community, MyLocalBoard runs itself. New meetings are scraped, extracted, and analyzed monthly with zero human intervention.
01
Scrape
Download agendas, minutes, budgets, and audio from government websites
02
Extract
AI reads every document — votes, decisions, dollar amounts, who said what
03
Analyze
Cross-reference budgets against policy mandates to surface misalignments
04
Index
Store structured data with full-text search across all boards in a city
05
Answer
Residents ask questions in plain language, get cited answers in seconds
Proof of concept
Santa Monica College Board of Trustees
MyLocalBoard is live today — indexing 25 years of board records. Try it above.
349
Board meetings
1998 – 2026
2,656
Votes tracked
Per-trustee breakdowns
9,819
Decisions
Budget, policy, personnel
72
Budget reports
Quarterly financials analyzed
47
Policy documents
CA bills, CCCCO memos
12
Audio transcripts
Speaker-attributed

The validation test

We fed 25 years of budget documents and California workforce development policy into the analysis engine. Without seeing any human-written critique, MyLocalBoard independently identified: personnel costs consuming 91.4% of discretionary spending, a projected $9.2 million Hold Harmless funding gap, an 80% collapse in Guided Pathways funding, and administrative growth outpacing faculty investment. The platform doesn't just store records — it generates accountability.

Vision
Every board. Every city.
MyLocalBoard isn't a tool for one board — it's civic infrastructure for entire communities. Starting with three California cities, then every community that wants it.
Santa Monica
● Live
SMC Board of Trustees (operational) · City Council · SMMUSD School Board · Planning Commission · Rent Control Board · Bond Oversight
Long Beach
LBCC Board of Trustees · City Council · LBUSD School Board · Planning Commission · Port Authority · Water Board
San Jose
SJCC Board of Trustees · City Council · County Board of Education · Planning Commission · VTA Transit Board · Housing Authority
Open source
Transparency about transparency
The MyLocalBoard pipeline will be open source. Any community foundation, newsroom, or civic organization can deploy it for their own city.
Open
Pipeline code
Scrapers, extractors, analyzers, loaders. Point it at any government website and build your own instance.
Open
Q&A interface
The search API and chat interface. Deploy it on Vercel for free. Your community's data, your community's portal.
Service
Managed deployment
Don't want to run your own? EmpathySystem.ai deploys, configures, and maintains MyLocalBoard for your community.
Sustainability
Infrastructure, not a program
Once deployed, MyLocalBoard runs itself. No ongoing staff. No perpetual funding. Just civic infrastructure that works.
$0/mo
Human maintenance per cityPipeline scrapes, extracts, and indexes automatically
~$50/mo
Cloud infrastructure per cityDatabase hosting, AI tokens, serverless functions
<$600/yr
Total ongoing cost per cityFundable by any community foundation, library, or city IT budget
Team
Built by someone who serves his community
Dr. Luis Barrera Castañón
Founder & CEO, EmpathySystem.ai
SMC Board of Trustees member. Ed.D. in career pathway partnerships. 20 years in workforce development — from Para Los Ninos to UnidosUS to Goodwill Southern California. Built the MyLocalBoard proof of concept while serving the community he grew up in. Technical expertise spans system architecture, AI product management, data modeling, prompt engineering, consent and privacy architecture, and multi-portal application design.
Your community deserves transparency

Want MyLocalBoard for your city? Have a government board that should be searchable? Get in touch.

Contact us →