Polimill, the Japanese company behind civic engagement platform Surfvote, has built QommonsAI, a generative AI platform for public-sector workflows now used by approximately 1,050 municipalities and 550,000 public employees across Japan. The platform addresses a structural challenge: public-sector teams are consumed by daily operations, leaving little time to reflect citizens’ voices in policy. Starting with assembly response, QommonsAI now provides specialized AI for public services, social welfare, and legal search, evolving from a productivity tool into what Polimill calls a “public OS” for municipal work.

A key technical challenge was fragmentary data—each municipality has its own workflows and document formats, with past records scattered. Polimill collected and standardized assembly minutes from across Japan, using AI to add metadata and build a cross-municipality, cross-time-period search foundation. This structure was expanded into welfare, law, and other administrative domains, turning distributed information into an accessible knowledge base.

OpenAI’s GPT models form the core of QommonsAI. The broad familiarity of ChatGPT lowers the adoption barrier for public employees unfamiliar with technical terms. GPT models are the most frequently selected option for QommonsAI’s general conversation feature. For development, Polimill adopted Codex across the workflow from requirements definition to testing, allowing engineers to focus on reviewing AI-generated plans and making high-level decisions. This approach, combined with hands-on support from OpenAI including best practices and process design, accelerated development speed by 3-5x.

In validation, less-experienced employees using AI drafted policy proposals that received evaluations close to those from veteran officials. However, experienced officials’ proposals still scored highest. Polimill attributes the gap to tacit knowledge—practical judgment not documented in manuals. The company plans to record how veteran officials instruct AI and revise outputs, turning undocumented judgment into organizational knowledge.

Looking ahead, Polimill plans a full rollout of Qommons ONE in fall 2026, a store where outside companies can provide applications for municipalities. At its center will be a “super agent” that integrates multiple specialized AI systems and private-sector apps. Users will state a goal, and the system will call the necessary AI or apps to produce practical deliverables from research to presentations. Polimill sees OpenAI’s broad model capabilities and agent development know-how as important foundations for this vision.