The Town of Gilbert, Arizona—one of the fastest-growing communities in the United States—has long been known for its innovation-forward mindset and strong commitment to public service. With over 292,000 residents and expanding departments across public safety, human resources, and technology, Gilbert’s leadership recognized a growing challenge: how to ensure every message—internal or external—was clear, professional, and delivered with confidence.

The challenge

Building clearer communication across a rapidly scaling government

As Gilbert’s operations expanded, its teams faced growing pressure to communicate clearly, especially in high-stakes, time-sensitive roles. Inconsistent writing tools and manual editing processes slowed things down, creating friction and risk. At the same time, town leadership wanted to introduce secure AI that could reduce workload, support governance, and scale across departments. With employees advocating for several different tools, the town’s Chief of Emerging Technology, Eugene Mejia, adopted a strategy to meet employees where they were and implemented two AI tools to test and learn about their strengths.

Grammarly’s solution

Fast deployment, strong governance, and confidence at scale

Gilbert deployed Grammarly across key departments, including Human Resources, Fire & Rescue, and the Town Manager’s office, to meet these evolving needs. Alongside Grammarly, Microsoft CoPilot was also deployed to allow teams to experiment with multiple AI tools. Grammarly’s real-time suggestions helped employees improve the clarity, tone, and correctness of their writing without disrupting existing workflows.

Security and seamless deployment were top priorities. Grammarly’s support for single sign-on (SSO) and system for cross-domain identity management (SCIM) made setup smooth for Gilbert’s IT team, while meeting compliance standards that were critical to moving forward.

“IT appreciated that Grammarly supported SSO and SCIM—it made provisioning smooth. Security was a big deal, so knowing it met our compliance standards was key,” said Mejia.

To drive adoption, Grammarly provided role-based training sessions and AI enablement that helped different teams confidently use the product. Leadership also leaned into Grammarly’s Style Guides and Brand Tones to reinforce consistency across departments. Admin panel insights gave Gilbert visibility into usage and impact, supporting continued alignment and optimization.

The impact

Efficiency gains and broad adoption across departments

With Grammarly in place, Gilbert saw a 92% improvement in communication quality. Staff spent an average of 1.24 hours per day working more effectively with Grammarly’s AI assistance. Adoption of AI grew by 96%, and the resulting productivity gains translated into a projected 23.9x return on investment (ROI)*.

“We’re communicating more clearly, which just makes everything run smoother, internally and externally,” said Mejia.

The benefits were especially clear for public safety teams. As Gilbert continues to expand Grammarly access, teams like Fire & Rescue are finding that improved communication isn’t just helpful—it’s essential.

“For a team like the Fire Department, it’s not just about grammar—it’s about making sure what they write is clear, fast, and can’t be misinterpreted. That’s critical in their line of work,” Mejia added.

Grammarly has become a trusted tool in Gilbert’s AI-powered government stack—helping every department communicate with greater clarity, speed, and confidence as they serve a growing community.

*Communication quality and ROI calculated by Grammarly. Baseline time savings is a conservative 20 mins/user/day (Grammarly benchmarks of 20-40 mins per day). Assumes a conservative 20% average burden rate (typical burden rate in the US is 30%). Avg. salary is based on Gilbert’s average salary estimate.