City of Lake Stevens Governs Shadow AI and Automates Public Disclosure Requests with Darwin AI

As one of Washington State’s fastest-growing cities, Lake Stevens moved early to address the risks of shadow AI and ungoverned generative tools across city departments. In 2025, the city partnered with Darwin AI to deploy Darwin Govern, establishing a centralized AI visibility and policy enforcement platform, and began piloting Darwin LaunchPad to automate its most resource-intensive administrative workflow: public disclosure requests.

The City of Lake Stevens serves a rapidly growing community in Snohomish County, Washington. With a small but agile city staff, leadership recognized that AI tools were already in active use across departments, but without any inventory, policy framework, or audit trail. Darwin was selected to bring structure to that environment before it created regulatory or reputational risk.

Results & Impact

Initial Outcomes

• Full shadow AI visibility achieved within days of deployment
• Living AI inventory and policy framework established, aligned to Washington State public records requirements and the NIST AI risk management framework
• Three-tier classification framework (Authorized / Sandbox / Unauthorized) applied to city AI tool usage
• Public disclosure request automation in active development via Darwin LaunchPad

Operational Impact

• Staff given structured, governed AI workflows that improve how the city operates without increasing risk
• AI adoption risk reduced through enforced guardrails, reducing the likelihood of sensitive data exposure or public trust incidents
• The City hopes to automate the initial stages of public disclosure request responses, amplifying the impact of its public records team

The Challenge

Like most public agencies, Lake Stevens’ staff had already begun using AI tools to work more efficiently, but that adoption was happening organically, without oversight, policy, or any mechanism to ensure compliance with Washington’s public records laws.

Under the Washington Public Records Act, any record generated by or using AI tools may be subject to disclosure, meaning the city needed the ability to retrieve, audit, and export AI inputs and outputs on demand.

At the same time, public disclosure requests had become one of the city’s most resource-intensive administrative functions. With six of 140 staff dedicated to Public Disclosure Requests (PDR) work, leadership was looking for a solution that could reduce that burden without sacrificing accuracy, legal compliance, or public accountability.

“Of my 140 employees, 6 of them work entirely on public disclosure requests. It's such a pain point for us and so expensive. My ideal public disclosure request AI platform would read the request, understand it, go into my databases, pull the data, redact it, and my clerk wakes up in the morning with an 80% solution. What's great is, under Launchpad with Darwin, we're building that.— Former Mayor Brett Gailey, City of Lake Stevens

The Solution

Darwin AI was selected because it is the only AI governance and agentic workflow platform built exclusively for state and local government. “Darwin is to AI what McAfee is to your internet security. It helps staff understand that they have guardrails on their AI usage within an organization. Right now with the Darwin product, we're able to see authorized, unauthorized, and shadow AI. That lets us know where we're at.,” said City of Lake Stevens Former Mayor Brett Gailey. Unlike repositioned enterprise security products, Darwin’s platform is native to the workflows, regulatory frameworks, and accountability standards that define public sector operations.

Darwin Govern

Darwin Govern provides Lake Stevens with a centralized AI control plane. It surfaces every AI tool in use across departments, classifies each tool against a three-tier risk framework (Authorized / Sandbox / Unauthorized), and enforces the city’s own policies automatically. The platform produces a living AI inventory and audit trail that satisfies Washington State public records obligations and aligns to the NIST AI risk management framework and GovAI Coalition standard.

Darwin LaunchPad

Darwin LaunchPad is being used to build a governed agentic workflow for public disclosure request responses. The workflow is designed to read an incoming request, identify and pull relevant data, apply redaction logic, and deliver an 80% complete response package to staff by the following morning, dramatically reducing the manual effort currently required.

Both products operate inside the same governance spine, meaning every workflow built in LaunchPad automatically inherits the city’s Govern policies.

Implementation

Implementation began with Darwin’s no-cost shadow AI discovery assessment, which surfaced the city’s actual AI tool footprint before any budget commitment was required. Deployment of Darwin Govern followed, with the city’s AI classification framework and policy structure established rapidly. Darwin LaunchPad workflows are being developed in close collaboration with Darwin’s customer success team, including onsite engagement with Darwin leadership.

Why This Is Replicable

Lake Stevens’ situation is not unique: a growing city, lean staff, high PDR volume, and an AI-active workforce operating without governance. Hundreds of local governments face the same combination of risks. The TXShare cooperative contract means any eligible agency can follow the same procurement path Lake Stevens used, without duplicating the competitive solicitation process.