Cal Poly’s AI-powered journalism platform Digital Democracy won an Emmy for helping journalists uncover how California lawmakers quietly block bills without public votes.
Digital Democracy is an innovative AI-powered platform developed by Cal Poly that transforms how journalists access and analyze government proceedings. The technology automatically transcribes legislative meetings and provides journalists with tools to uncover hidden political processes.
By partnering with nonprofit news organizations like CalMatters, the project aims to revive local journalism and increase government transparency, said Foaad Khosmood, the architect of Digital Democracy and Cal Poly’s Forbes endowed professor of computer engineering. Developed with major guidance by Cal Poly students and faculty, Digital Democracy recently won an Emmy Award, and many other honors, for its groundbreaking approach to using technology to support democratic engagement.
“This is recognition that there is success in pursuing technology projects that serve the public good,” Khosmood said.
The project originated in 2014 at Cal Poly’s Institute for Advanced Technology and Public Policy. The initial focus was on transcribing government proceedings — the outcome shifted and expanded to aiding journalists in their research to uncover hidden legislative processes.
Christine Robertson, a Cal Poly alumna and former chief of staff in the California State Legislature, witnessed firsthand the opacity of legislative processes. With former State Sen. Sam Blakeslee, R-California, she helped develop a solution aimed at fundamentally changing how citizens access government information.
“As a former legislative staffer, I saw fundamental issues with accountability,” Robertson said. “Lawmakers would move bills through committees, and the public had no way to understand how or why changes were made.”
The project faced significant technological challenges. Emerging technologies like voice-to-text and artificial intelligence were still in their infancy.
“Top technologists said what we were attempting was technologically impossible,” Robertson said. “The California Department of Technology estimated it would cost over $100 million to build what our students ultimately created.”
Leveraging Cal Poly’s interdisciplinary approach, students from computer science, political science and journalism collaborated to develop the platform. Undergraduate students wrote code, designed interfaces and solved complex technological problems that seemed insurmountable, exercising Learn By Doing.
“As a Cal Poly alum, it’s deeply gratifying to see that the ‘learn by doing’ mission in practice, to solve a real problem that I experienced professionally,” Robertson said.
The major breakthrough came through partnerships like the one with CalMatters, a non-partisan journalism organization. Multiple project alumni from Cal Poly now work full-time at CalMatters, Luke Fanguna being one of them. After studying computer science and working with Khosmood during his time at Cal Poly, Fanguna went on to work at CalMatters as a software engineer.
“I believe that the constant communication between CalMatters and Digital Democracy is what makes it so impactful,” Fanguna said. “Digital Democracy does not build its technology in the eyes of a developer, but as a journalist. There are many meetings that go on to help understand how we can make the journalist’s ability to write stories easier.”
The technology behind the Emmy Award-winning innovation remains revolutionary, according to project lead Khosmood. The team carefully curated a system of patterns designed to use advanced AI to generate story tips for journalists. This allows them to precisely track legislative discussions and meetings, helping to slowly expose previously invisible government mechanisms.
“Digital Democracy does not build its technology in the eyes of a developer, but as a journalist. There are many meetings that go on to help understand how we can make the journalist’s ability to write stories easier,” said Fanguna.
Khosmood emphasized that the project’s impact on journalism extends beyond innovation, adding that it provides a model for how technology and collaboration can revive local reporting and democratic accountability. Digital Democracy sets the stage to support all of the local news organizations struggling to find resources for stories. By providing tools for in-depth reporting, students and professional journalists feel empowered in their field.
“The future of political reporting is local,” Robertson said. “When reporting goes directly to a representative’s hometown voters, it creates a new level of accountability.”
From a classroom project to an Emmy Award, Digital Democracy reflects how Cal Poly’s innovation can ripple beyond campus and into the newsroom.
“There’s great utility in the public for this kind of technology,” Khosmood said.