A statewide, AI-assisted civic information platform that turns public meetings across New Jersey into searchable, verifiable information for journalists, researchers, and the public.
Civilio NJ is a statewide civic information service created in partnership with the New Jersey Civic Information Consortium (NJCIC) and the Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University (CCM). It is designed to help New Jersey residents, journalists, and researchers more easily follow government plans and decisions.
The platform captures and analyzes public meetings across municipal, county, school board, and statewide government bodies throughout New Jersey. Using AI-assisted analysis grounded in public records, Civilio NJ notifies the public of government actions, plans, and decisions through plain-language summaries and alerts linked directly to source materials.
The resulting database of transcripts, meeting documents, and supporting analyses powers a deep research platform for New Jersey news organizations, universities, researchers, and other public-interest groups seeking to monitor and better understand government activity across the state.
While most government meetings are technically public, meaningful barriers to access — including the scale, complexity, and volume of government information — often place public awareness and civic engagement out of reach for many residents and under-resourced organizations.
Many communities across New Jersey face growing gaps in local information access and civic awareness. Barriers to accessibility, capacity, and discoverability frequently prevent residents from meaningfully engaging with their government. Civilio NJ is built to close those gaps by making public information understandable, searchable, and usable.
Civilio NJ captures public meetings across municipal, county, school board, and statewide government bodies throughout New Jersey.
Meetings are structured into searchable, verifiable datasets — transcripts, agenda packets, and supporting documents linked back to original source evidence.
Residents follow issues through plain-language alerts, while journalists and researchers run deep, cross-jurisdictional analysis — every claim traceable to its source.
Follow the issues affecting your community through a notification service that links plain-language summaries directly to the public record.
Access, verify, and understand local government information at scale — a tool to augment public-interest reporting, not replace it.
Conduct longitudinal investigations and cross-jurisdictional analysis into public policy, spending, contracting, housing, education, infrastructure, and more.
Civilio NJ is the product of a partnership between Civilio, the New Jersey Civic Information Consortium, and the Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University — reflecting a shared commitment to government transparency, civic engagement, and public trust. The partnership with Civilio is supported thanks to funding from the Google News Initiative.
“This project represents the kind of statewide civic information collaboration New Jersey needs. Strengthening civic participation requires investing in systems that make public information understandable and usable, and enable the general public, local researchers, and journalists to see the trends and uncover the stories within.”
— Lisa Sahulka, Executive Director of the New Jersey Civic Information Consortium
“This project will centralize and streamline public meeting activity across all of our state’s diverse municipalities in a way that can directly augment public-interest reporting. Communities benefit when journalists and residents have better tools to access, verify, and understand local government information. The Center is proud to bring this tool to its partners across the state.”
— Stefanie Murray, Director of the Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State University
The Center for Cooperative Media is a grant-funded program of the College of Communication and Media at Montclair State University. Through its flagship project, the NJ News Commons, the Center connects more than 300 local news and information providers across the state. Civilio NJ will be made available to the Center’s partners as a tool to strengthen local journalism throughout New Jersey.
Civilio NJ’s systems are put through a rigorous independent benchmarking process to ensure the information the public receives is insightful, reliable, and accurate. Every dataset links back to original source evidence, allowing users to independently verify claims and context.
The initiative will be evaluated by Dr. Sarah Stonbely of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University. Her evaluation will assess the program’s implementation for its value to participating newsrooms and residents.