The UnGovr AI Bot

LEM.

Lem, a small boxy robot with a large LEM name plate across their front, seen from the chest up against a bare grey wall, head turned slightly to one side, the amber visor lit.

LEM is a fictional robot, and the way we draw the UnGovr AI Bot. The bot's job is to be outside: reading government websites, asking them things, and opening what comes back. The pictures are illustrations. The work in them is real.

Lem, a small boxy robot with a large LEM name plate across their front, stands at an open door at the near end of a long municipal corridor lined with identical closed doors, one arm still raised from knocking.
LEM reads the public web one page at a time, waiting as long between knocks as each site asked for.
Lem, a small boxy robot with a large LEM name plate across their front, stands on a cracked suburban road holding up a photograph of a pothole beside the actual pothole, which is full of rainwater.
Given a photograph of a problem, LEM works out what is in it and files the request with the department that fixes that sort of thing.
Lem, a small boxy robot with a large LEM name plate across their front and an amber visor lit, stands at a low filing cabinet in an empty municipal office, both arms resting on a keyboard in front of a boxy beige monitor whose screen is too small to read.
LEM asks agencies for public records by email, because a request in writing starts a clock.
Lem, a small boxy robot with a large LEM name plate across their front, reads a single opened letter in front of a floor-to-ceiling wall of pigeonholes stuffed with post, beside a stack of unopened letters taller than they are.
Thousands of agencies write back, at all hours and in no agreed format, and LEM reads every one of them.
Lem, a small boxy robot with a large LEM name plate across their back, sits beside a striped deckchair on a grey pebble beach under a flat overcast sky, facing a calm sea, with a windbreak planted in the stones.
LEM went to the seaside.

Two things the bot will not do. Solve a CAPTCHA, which is a sign saying no and is treated as one. And walk through a door that was locked, however badly.

What a crawler may lawfully do, and where, is the whole subject of the LexLint Scraping Brief.