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MTS · 2 min · Oct 22, 2026
Local governments still rely on outdated, fragile record systems
Sunil Rajaraman
Founder & CEO, Hamlet
Theo JaffeeHost · Co-founder & host, MTS
One of the first members of a16z's new media team; earlier hosted the Emergent Ventures-backed Theo Jaffee Podcast.
Sophia DewHost · Host, MTS
About this segment
Hamlet tracks community sentiment on topics including data centers, Flock Safety and short-term rentals. Sunil says one city accidentally lost years of records, illustrating how dated local systems can be.
From “Why Local Sentiment Kills Data Center Projects | Hamlet CEO”, Oct 22, 2026. Watch the full episode
Thanks. We'll look at and fix what's off.
“somebody accidentally deleted years worth of records and like that type of thing happens more commonly than you might think”
Takeaways
- Hamlet tracks sentiment on hundreds of local topics.
- Its rankings distinguish elected officials from public commenters.
- One city accidentally deleted years of public records.
In this episode
Full episode- 14:17Local data centers face different community objections2:38
- 9:56Understanding local power can solve the GovTech business problem2:23
- 7:36Local data gaps make AI answers about officials unreliable2:12
12:14Local governments still rely on outdated, fragile record systems2:08
Transcript
Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.
- 12:18
wow i had no idea i know today you guys a semi four published some research and some learnings Can you just share what they published and what that was all about? Yeah, two things happened this week for us. So if you go to our site, myhamlet.com, we actually started releasing some of our rankings of communities and how for and against they are things like data centers, against flock safety, which is like the hot one, Airbnb or short-term rentals.
- 12:49
We have hundreds of these topics tracked internally, and we know community sentiment toward all of them and we have it broken down by elected official and public commenter but we wanted to release some of it for public consumption semaphore uh thanks to semaphore for covering us and uh and they caught wind of some of the sentiment work that we're doing and uh you know they they covered us so um there's a lot of interest and i think people are realizing community sentiment matters a lot huge all right if we could share one thing from the insights that Semaphore published? What do you think is one of the craziest things that we can share today?
- 13:28
Well, I would say Semaphore didn't publish anything crazy. I just appreciate them analyzing and looking what we did. If you want a crazy story, oh, I got a good one. There was a community where we were trying to figure out some public records thing and somebody accidentally deleted years worth of records and like that type of thing happens more commonly than you might think um i mean many of the cities and counties operate like on software that's like from 1990s era and mistakes happen some are still like you know they they don't use cloud-based servers it's uh you know cities and counties are are stuck stuck in a in a time past some of them oh my gosh i I can't believe you just deleted half of that.
- 14:17
But what's some of the data that the Semi-Four Research published?