Raven RecordsPublic Records Navigator

Find the record. Understand the next step.

A source-first public-records experience for the moments when a resident, public-records officer, or city leader needs a clearer path from a question to an official document.

Public demonstration corpus · discovery only · original sources remain authoritative

A collaborative template

Built around the City’s source, not a black-box answer.

CloudRaven Labs makes the workflow visible: source, page, uncertainty, and the human decision that comes next.

Source organization

City of Kenmore

Official public-records guidance and published source links

E

Powered by

Elastic

Hybrid keyword and semantic search technology

Why the workflow matters

Public records are part of someone’s next decision.

The best demonstration is not a generic chatbot. It is a careful path through the questions that matter to people and the source work that matters to civic teams.

Resilience

A resident planning for the next storm

Find published emergency, hazard, and public-works records before making a household or neighborhood preparedness decision.

Mobility

A parent asking for a safer route

Trace transportation commitments and planning records to understand what has been published and where a follow-up request may help.

Housing

A neighbor trying to understand a housing decision

Connect ordinances, resolutions, and program records to a plain-language question without turning search into a legal conclusion.

Local business

A small business planning its next move

Locate fee schedules, adopted policy, and planning records, then open the original source before acting on it.

For city teams

Make follow-up work more deliberate.

Staff can use the same source trail to answer recurring questions, identify gaps, and prepare a request that is easier to route and review.

Trace a decision over time

Find the ordinance, amendment, resolution, or plan that explains how a public decision changed.

Follow money from allocation to delivery

Use source-linked retrieval to frame the next review question for housing, capital, or grant-funded work.

Prepare the right follow-up

Separate what is published from what still needs a records request, clarification, or human review.

One clear handoff

Search, verify, request.

Raven Records keeps the public experience simple while giving city teams a reviewable path for what happens next.

01

Ask in plain language

A resident or staff member starts with the topic, decision, or time period they care about.

02

Verify the source

Hybrid retrieval returns page-level passages and a direct link to the published source record.

03

Request what is missing

A structured draft helps the requester clarify scope before a human submits it through the official City process.

Illustrative pilot voices

Trust is part of the interface.

These are representative persona quotes for a presentation draft, not statements from City employees or constituents.

“The value is not an AI answer. It is a faster path to the right record, with the source and uncertainty still visible.”

Representative public-records officer

“I can start with a plain-language question and still end up with an official request when the answer is not already published.”

Representative constituent

What this POC does

It searches a screened demonstration corpus, shows page-level provenance, and helps a person prepare a request without submitting it automatically.

What still needs human review

Completeness, exemptions, redactions, currentness, and legal response decisions stay with the City and the requester. A sample corpus cannot establish that a record does not exist.

Raven Records

A CloudRaven Labs demonstration of a public-records discovery and request workflow for civic teams.

Demonstration language and representative quotes are subject to City review; this page does not imply City endorsement or a commercial partnership.