Case study · May 2026
We built Karla.
The first artificial intelligence assistant inside a Mexican municipal government. Designed with HotlumPowell on principles of governance, transparency, and reversibility. Three days after going live, the Secretary of Innovation and Technology of Querétaro published her founding manifesto.
"The machine does not isolate man from the great problems of nature, but plunges him more deeply into them."
— Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Wind, Sand and Stars
Architecture before code
In May 2026, HotlumPowell and the Secretariat of Innovation and Technology of the Municipality of Querétaro designed and built Karla — a persistent digital executive assistant that lives on a dedicated machine inside the office of Secretary Rodrigo Ruiz Ballesteros. No external implementation team. No SaaS contract. No servers shared with anyone else.
The architectural decisions that defined Karla from the first minute were not technical. They were governance decisions: the human always decides and signs, communications never leave without human review, personal information does not leave the user's machine, the tool starts at home before being proposed to the rest of the government.
Three days after going live, the Secretariat published the founding manifesto that declares Karla's existence, defines her role, and sets her limits. It is a public policy document, not a technical note. It opens with a Saint-Exupéry quote. It closes with a commitment to citizens. In between, six principles that codify exactly the architectural posture the tool was born with.
The operator behind Karla
Before Karla, the Secretary of Innovation and Technology of the Municipality of Querétaro directed BLOQUE, the Municipality's innovation, technology and creativity hub. Under his leadership:
BLOQUE is the infrastructure the Municipality of Querétaro built to bring technology, data, and AI tools to its population. Not a coworking space. Not an accelerator. When Felifer Macías Olvera appointed him Secretary of Innovation and Technology in December 2025, the appointment was grounded in what he had already built and run at BLOQUE. Karla extends that same operational discipline inward, into the government itself.
What Karla does, and what she will do
Capabilities live today + extensions underway, all under the same six principles of the manifesto.
Her own channels
- Dedicated Telegram bot for the Secretary
- Coming soon: her own institutional email address
- Coming soon: dedicated WhatsApp number
- Available 24/7 from a dedicated machine inside the Secretary's office
Executive assistance
- Follow-up on pending items, agreements, and dates
- Email review, classification by urgency and relevance
- Preliminary draft responses
- Topic research and synthesis
- Zero-draft document writing
- Analysis preparation and agenda organization
Internal coordination
- Interaction with the Secretariat's team
- Persistent memory across sessions and conversations
- Shared context on projects in progress
- Institutional information safekeeping and organization
Citizen service
Coming soon- Integration with the Municipality of Querétaro's public app
- Real-time support for digital procedures
- Information to citizens about municipal procedures and services
- Gradual extension to other areas of the Secretariat, evaluated and reversible
What Karla does not do, and will not do
- She does not decide. Government decisions belong to public servants, not to her.
- She does not sign or commit the Secretariat. Every communication is reviewed and authorized by a person.
- She does not impersonate anyone. When she interacts, she declares what she is.
- She does not replace human contact with citizens.
- She is not infallible. The human reviews.
- She does not operate in the dark. Her existence, role, and limits are public.
The six principles
From the manifesto published by the Secretariat of Innovation and Technology of the Municipality of Querétaro:
1. The human decides and signs
Artificial intelligence assists; the public servant resolves and responds. No government decision is made without a person who owns it.
2. Transparency
The use of AI assistance is declared, not hidden. Citizens have the right to know it exists, what it does, and what it does not do.
3. Serve those who serve
Assistance exists to free up the public servant's time and judgment, and that freed time must translate into better service to citizens. Efficiency is not an end in itself; it is a means to better serve people.
4. Discretion and information security
Information handled by the government is mostly public and sometimes sensitive; in all cases, it is protected. Credentials and sensitive data are encrypted, and nothing is shared externally without authorization.
5. Start at home
What the Secretariat proposes to the city is tested first on itself, and the cost of doing so in full view is assumed. We do not ask outward what we do not practice inward.
6. Reversibility and restraint
Adoption is gradual, evaluable, and reversible. No tool becomes indispensable before proving it deserves to be, and every step can be reviewed and corrected.
The manifesto
Five pages. A founding public policy document of the Secretariat of Innovation and Technology, Municipal Administration of Querétaro 2024-2027. Published on May 17, 2026.
"A government that asks its city to adopt the future is obligated to adopt it within itself as well, in full view of everyone, and to account for how it goes."
— Rodrigo Ruiz Ballesteros, Secretary of Innovation and Technology, Municipality of Querétaro
Download the full manifesto (PDF, Spanish)HotlumPowell's role
We built the tool. The Secretariat wrote the doctrine. The people who operate a tool decide how it gets used.
Our work on Karla was architectural. The authorship is the Secretary's. We designed an assistant that respects the limits he wanted before he knew he would write them into a manifesto: the human decides, the tool prepares, personal content never leaves the user's machine, adoption starts at home before being proposed to others. When the Secretariat published the manifesto three days later, those limits were already encoded in the software.
"When we had the privilege of helping shape the concept that became BLOQUE, we realized the Municipal Government of Querétaro is ahead of its time and open to it. It was no surprise that when we approached the Secretary to propose this initiative, he received it with openness and interest. Today Karla is the proof of that openness: the first artificial intelligence assistant inside a Mexican municipal government, already in operation, under the six principles the Secretary published in his founding manifesto."
— Mario Valle Reyes, HotlumPowell
Let's talk
If Karla can operate with this discipline inside a Secretariat of Innovation, she is ready for your organization. HotlumPowell designs, deploys, and operates AI infrastructure under the same principles of governance, transparency, and reversibility.
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Photo: Municipio de Querétaro · © Municipio de Querétaro 2024-2027