Cloudwick Helps Scottsdale Modernize Public Services by Building a Blueprint for Frictionless Government

Facing fragmented systems and rising service expectations, the city of Scottsdale, Arizona, adopted the Amorphic data and AI platform from AWS Partner Cloudwick Technologies. This unified, AI ready data foundation on AWS helped the city enhance legacy systems, automate workflows, and enable real time, self service insights across departments. 

Using Amorphic to connect legacy systems and enable AI-driven insights, Scottsdale reduced process times for finance, HR, and fire services while improving transparency and decision making. Citizen engagement was also transformed through AI tools that deliver faster, personalized access to city information. Overall, the initiative created a more efficient, responsive, and frictionless digital government.

To hear how the City of Scottsdale is turning AI into real outcomes with Cloudwick and AWS, watch the full video interview here.

Scottsdale, Arizona, a growing city of more than 241,000 people, had a vision of becoming a modern, digital-first municipality. But like many cities, Scottsdale faced obstacles such as fragmented systems, limited data accessibility, and growing expectations from citizens. “I really wanted to build a unified data platform that could serve as a foundation for everything, from enterprise analytics to automated workflows and now AI-powered applications,” says Bianca Lochner, Ph.D., chief information officer for the City of Scottsdale.

The lack of unified data and technologies meant the city struggled with operational efficiency. For example, the Scottsdale Fire Department faced what Lochner describes as a “workforce tsunami,” with more than 50 percent of firefighters eligible for retirement. To stem the tide, the department needed to accelerate training and knowledge transfer. In the finance and human resources departments, legacy systems made it difficult to access real-time data, and HR analysts spent days creating reports from different spreadsheets. Planning and Permitting employees dealt with time-consuming, manual intake processes. “As a CIO, I couldn’t easily get a clear picture of my operating budget in real time,” Lochner says. “And my peers across the city felt the same way.”

Additionally, Scottsdale was under pressure to deliver better services to its citizens—faster, more efficiently, and with fewer barriers. “Our mission is simple: better service for a world-class community,” Lochner explains. “The expectations of our constituents are incredibly high, and we needed to meet and exceed them.”

After laying the groundwork for data modernization, Scottsdale partnered with Cloudwick Technologies, an AWS Advanced Tier Services Partner that helps organizations modernize without disrupting mission-critical systems. Cloudwick has developed specialized expertise, earning Amazon Web Services (AWS) competencies including the Government ISV Specialization, the AI Software Specialization, the AI Services Specialization, the Machine Learning Consulting Specialization, and the Data and Analytics Specialization. At the center of its approach is Amorphic, Cloudwick’s flagship data and AI platform.

Amorphic is an orchestration layer built on more than 80 native AWS services, including Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon Redshift, AWS Glue, AWS Lake Formation, Amazon Quick Sight, and Amazon Bedrock. The platform automates and manages the entire data lifecycle, enabling organizations to integrate, process, and analyze data across disparate systems while embedding AI into everyday operations. Importantly, Amorphic deploys directly into a customer’s AWS environment, ensuring data ownership, security, and compliance. “Our focus is around helping organizations bring performance and productivity enhancements to the legacy systems they already own so they don’t have to rip and replace. We call it the Amorphic mission-critical intelligence layer,” explains Mark Schreiber, vice president, intelligent automation at Cloudwick. “It sits on top of ERP, CRM, case management, and document systems, and it allows organizations to bring AI into operational workflows without having to completely replace what they already have.”

Scottsdale collaborated with Cloudwick to implement the Amorphic data foundation, which connects legacy systems, enables AI-driven insights, and supports self-service for both employees and citizens. Amorphic now serves as Scottsdale’s enterprise data and intelligent automation backbone, enabling governed AI adoption across departments and providing a centralized and scalable environment for integrating structured and unstructured data, accelerating analytics, automation, and AI deployment across city operations.

Rather than focusing on a single use case, Scottsdale took a platform-first approach with Amorphic—building capabilities that could scale across departments including finance, human resources, fire and EMS, permitting and planning, and communications. With Amorphic, data from existing city systems is now integrated into a unified platform, enabling leaders to access insights instantly. AI-driven knowledge management tools also allow firefighters to query historical data using natural language.

The Scottsdale Fire Department’s Fire Artificial Intelligence Training Helper (F.AI.T.H.) platform leverages AWS and the Cloudwick Amorphic platform to provide AI-enabled knowledge retrieval and operational intelligence capabilities for firefighters and emergency personnel. The platform accelerates access to standard operating procedures, operational guidance, incident-related information, and institutional knowledge.

On the citizen-facing side, Scottsdale is redefining how residents interact with city services through its Web 311 initiative and a next-generation AI assistant known as “Ask Scotty.” Unlike traditional chatbots, Ask Scotty is designed to provide contextual, personalized responses by integrating data from 11 city systems and websites. Built using AWS services including Amazon Bedrock, Ask Scotty integrates with Amazon Connect and enables residents and visitors to ask complex questions—for example, about reporting potholes or finding local services—and receive immediate, accurate responses. The system is also being extended to support Scottsdale’s thriving tourism industry, which welcomes over 11 million visitors annually.

Scottsdale’s real-time operational intelligence environment supports public safety coordination for the world’s largest golf tournament, the Waste Management Phoenix Open, which attracts approximately 1.2 million attendees over the course of the event week.

The city also established one of the first formal municipal AI Governance Councils in the nation, supported by enterprise governance processes integrated into the city’s AWS and Cloudwick-enabled AI ecosystem. This governance framework allows the city to accelerate innovation while maintaining strong controls around cybersecurity, data governance, privacy, and responsible AI adoption.

The results of Scottsdale’s modernization efforts are both tangible and transformative, and the city is seeing significant public safety and operational intelligence benefits from using Amorphic. For example, AI-enabled workflows supported through Scottsdale’s enterprise data strategy have reduced EMS reporting time by about 60 percent. Processes that once took weeks—such as training, development, and reporting—are now completed in minutes because Amorphic automates workflows and reduces manual effort across teams. Real-time access to financial and operational data enables leaders to access insights instantly rather than in days. By unlocking data from legacy systems, Scottsdale has also gained unprecedented transparency and visibility into its operations. “With the Cloudwick Amorphic data and AI platform on AWS, we can access our data without having to replace our existing systems,” Lochner says. “We’ve been freed and empowered with intuitive access to our data, and there’s no end to the capabilities we can bring about because of that.”

Perhaps the biggest transformation has taken place in Scottsdale’s Fire Department. Early operational results for F.AI.T.H. indicate 60–90 percent reductions in time spent locating critical documentation and operational procedures. Previously, new hires in the department spent weeks manually reviewing thousands of pages of training materials and building assessments. With Amorphic, that process now takes minutes. Important information is also available instantly. “A firefighter can say, ‘I responded to a fire on this street a few years ago,’ and immediately retrieve the full case history,” says Schreiber. “That kind of access was unimaginable before and it would have taken days or even weeks to get the data.” In addition, fire incident information retrieval time has been reduced by about 70 percent, improving operational access to critical information during emergency response activities.

Critically, Scottsdale is reducing friction for its citizens because Amorphic enables faster response times for service requests, self-service capabilities through AI-powered tools, and reduced reliance on call centers and human agents. “Scottsdale wants to make it as easy as possible for citizens to get answers,” says Schreiber. “It’s about removing friction from every interaction.” Adds Lochner, “Our goal is to empower residents with information, so they don’t have to call or wait. They can get what they need instantly.”

These outcomes are one reason Scottsdale has been recognized nationally, including being named the #1 Digital City for three consecutive years.

The city is continuing to expand its use of Amorphic across additional departments, including Planning and Permitting, an area known for complexity and delays. Scottsdale is currently deploying AI-enabled permit review capabilities that leverage Amazon Bedrock and the Cloudwick Amorphic platform to modernize residential plan review operations. Initial use cases are expected to support review and analysis of up to 100 residential plan reviews per day. The anticipated business impact includes reducing portions of the review process from days to potentially hours or minutes for qualifying use cases. The city also anticipates measurable improvements in customer satisfaction through faster turnaround times, greater process transparency, and more consistent review experiences.

At the same time, Scottsdale is advancing its self-service strategy by expanding open data initiatives and deploying next-generation AI-enabled constituent engagement capabilities that take advantage of AWS and Cloudwick technologies. These initiatives are expected to improve 24/7 constituent access to information and services while increasing operational efficiency and scalability across customer service functions. As deployment expands, the city anticipates up to 70 percent reduction in manual Tier 1 support workloads, improved response times, and increased engagement. The city is also using the AWS Skill Builder program to give employees additional hands-on training in AI and other AWS technologies. “By using AWS Skill Builder, our employees get to contribute to our mission in a very exciting way,” Lochner says. “With Cloudwick and AWS, I believe we’re uniquely positioned to continue to innovate and be a top digital city because of our culture of collaboration and innovation.”

Cloudwick Technologies is an AWS Partner that helps public sector and enterprise organizations unlock the full potential of their data through automation, analytics, and secure AI deployment. Since 2020, Cloudwick’s Amorphic data platform has enabled government and enterprise customers to modernize operations, automate workflows, and accelerate decision-making across departments.