CivicOS Institute — Expert Input Survey

Estimated time: 8 to 12 minutes. Every question is optional. This survey is intentionally uneven — please answer only what speaks to your research. Skip anything outside your wheelhouse.

Thank you for taking the time to contribute your perspective. Your responses will directly shape priorities, evaluation design, and grant framing for three interconnected efforts under the CivicOS Institute umbrella.

CivicOS Institute (mission layer) — the nonprofit vehicle reducing systemic barriers in public service delivery through practical, low-cost, open source approaches.

Project ORTUS (law-as-code layer) — an MLIR-based compiler substrate that turns municipal legal text into deterministic, auditable decisions with citation-bound explanations. First pilot: residential fence permits, single municipality, targeting ≥95% agreement with expert-reviewed baseline.

Project Athena (civic intelligence layer) — a locally-sovereign civic monitoring platform assembling confidence-rated signal chains from campaign finance, lobbyist filings, property records, agenda items, and votes. First jurisdiction: Palm Beach County, FL (39 municipalities + 80+ governing bodies).

We are preparing proposals for upcoming NSF and related grant opportunities. With your permission, your responses will be cited in needs statements, design criteria, and evaluation plans.

Orientation — Which Lenses Apply to You?

Check any that apply. This helps us route your responses and calibrate follow-up.

Section A — Mission Layer: CivicOS Institute

A1.Institutional Design

Enacting digital government at the municipal level depends as much on institutions and coordination as on tooling. Which institutional lever matters most for the first CivicOS project wave?

Cross-boundary information sharing agreements Inter-agency governance capacity Legal and procurement reform Community and stakeholder co-production Standards and interoperability mandates Other:

A2.Transparency & Trust

Based on your research, what is the mechanism most likely to translate a CivicOS pilot into measurable public trust gains — and what is the mechanism most likely to backfire?

A3.Practical Adoption

In your experience with mobile and digital service adoption, what is the single biggest friction point that kills realistic municipal uptake?

A4.Any Lens

Which year-one outcomes matter most? (Pick up to 3)

Reduced service friction for residents Faster turnaround times Better transparency and auditability Higher trust and usability Lower implementation/maintenance costs Stronger legal and governance compliance Better inter-agency coordination Evidence for replicable pilots

Section A — Your thoughts & ideas (optional)

Open space. Anything on the mission layer you want us to hear — in your own words. Observations, warnings, analogies, references, half-formed ideas welcome.

Section B — Project ORTUS: Law-as-Code

Context. ORTUS compiles municipal legal text through an MLIR dialect into deterministic rule bundles. Every decision emits a machine-auditable trace with citation IDs back to source sections. Explanations are generated from the IR trace, not from a free-form LLM. Pilot: residential fence permits, one municipality.

B1.Administrative Law / AI Adjudication

For a law-as-code system producing lawful, reviewable public decisions, which property is most critical to preserve administrative legitimacy?

Determinism (identical inputs → identical outputs) Full citation binding for every material conclusion Human-readable rule representation editable by legal staff Rule conflict and dead-rule detection prior to release Independent legal review loop Right to explanation consistent with due process Other:

B2.Algorithmic Fairness

Where is a deterministic, rule-bound system like ORTUS still at risk of producing unfair outcomes — and what fairness audit would you want to see before it goes live?

B3.Institutional / Coordination

ORTUS requires legal staff, engineers, and civic stakeholders to share authorship of the rule bundle. What governance structure is most likely to make that shared authorship work in a real municipality?

B4.Practical Adoption

If a municipality can only adopt one law-as-code domain beyond fence permits, which domain gives the best adoption-to-impact ratio? (e.g., code enforcement, licensing, benefits eligibility, variances, ADA compliance, records access, stormwater)

Section B — Your thoughts & ideas (optional)

Open space for ORTUS. Architecture critiques, risks, research connections, cautionary analogues from automated state or legal informatics literature. Anything we should read or stop doing.

Section C — Project Athena: Civic Intelligence

Context. Athena assembles data points (campaign finance, lobbyist filings, property records, agenda appearances, votes) into confidence-rated signal chains across 39 municipalities and 80+ bodies in Palm Beach County, FL. Every claim is bound to an evidentiary class and source. The system is accountability infrastructure — not prediction, not enforcement.

C1.Transparency & Participation

What is the most defensible way to surface a cross-jurisdictional influence pattern to the public without undermining trust or inviting backlash?

C2.Usable Privacy / HCI

Athena processes public records about identifiable people (officials, lobbyists, property owners). What usable privacy and consent design principles should constrain the public-facing layer?

C3.ML Privacy / Security

Where are the most likely attack surfaces on a civic intelligence platform — data poisoning, membership inference, source impersonation, model manipulation, other — and which should we prioritize hardening first?

C4.Fairness / Accountability Methods

How would you design an evaluation that demonstrates Athena's signal chains are defensible civic intelligence rather than narrative construction or selective emphasis?

C5.Administrative Law

What legal or constitutional guardrails should bound how Athena outputs can be used by oversight bodies, press, or litigants?

Section C — Your thoughts & ideas (optional)

Open space for Athena. Misuse patterns that keep you up at night, comparable projects to learn from, framing concerns, prior work we should study.

Section D — Open Source Sustainability & Community Health

Context. CivicOS, ORTUS, and Athena are intended to be open source and replicable across jurisdictions. Sustainability and community health are first-order design concerns, not afterthoughts.

D1.OSS Production / Scientific Software

What is the most underappreciated determinant of whether an open source public-sector project sustains itself beyond its initial grant?

D2.FOSS Community Health Metrics

Which CHAOSS-style metrics would you recommend we commit to tracking from day one as honest indicators of project health — not vanity metrics?

D3.Any Lens

What governance structure best protects an open source civic project from capture (by vendors, by a single municipality, by a single funder)?

D4.Practical Adoption

What keeps a replicable open source civic tool from actually being replicated in a second jurisdiction — and what intervention has the highest leverage?

Section D — Your thoughts & ideas (optional)

Open space for sustainability and community health. Projects we should study, funding models that actually worked, governance traps to avoid, and any thoughts on replicability that do not fit the questions above.

Section E — Grant Framing, Evidence, and Evaluation

E1.

For an NSF or comparable grant proposal covering the CivicOS / ORTUS / Athena portfolio, which framing is strongest for the program reviewers you know?

Public interest technology and civic infrastructure Responsible and accountable AI in public systems Human-AI collaboration for administrative decisions Digital government and institutional capacity Transparency, trust, and democratic legitimacy Open source sustainability and community infrastructure Other:

E2.

What evidence threshold should CivicOS meet before scaling beyond initial pilots? (Pick any that apply)

Operational improvement metrics in pilot sites Independent evaluation and external review Legal/policy compliance under real conditions User trust and usability gains Total cost advantage over alternatives Replication in a second jurisdiction Fairness audit passing Security posture review passing

E3.

Are there one or two papers, frameworks, datasets, or case studies you would recommend we anchor the proposal to?

E4.

Is there a specific NSF program, foundation, collaborator, or community of practice you would flag as directly relevant?

E5.

What should we be worrying about that we probably are not? (This question exists because the people we are asking see the field more clearly than we do.)

Section E — Your thoughts & ideas (optional)

Open space for grant strategy. Framing you would push back on, collaborators we should contact, prior proposals that got funded for similar work, review-panel dynamics we should anticipate.

Section F — Collaboration and Follow-Up

F1.

Would you be open to a short follow-up call (15 to 20 minutes) after we review survey input?

Yes Maybe Not at this time

F2.

With your permission, may we cite or paraphrase your free-text responses in grant materials?

Yes, attributed Yes, anonymized No Decide on a per-item basis

F3.

Would you be willing to be listed as a domain advisor, letter-of-support author, or consulted expert on a specific proposal?

Yes — advisor Yes — letter of support (pending proposal review) Yes — consulted expert citation only Not at this time

F4 — Contact

Name

Institution

Email (optional, for follow-up)

Final Open Reflection (optional)

Anything else you want us to hear — about CivicOS Institute, ORTUS, Athena, the grant trajectory, or the ecosystem these projects sit inside. No character limit.

Thank you. Your responses help shape priorities, evaluation design, and grant framing for the CivicOS portfolio.