A decorated Indianapolis Army veteran is becoming the face of a statewide civic-tech rollout designed to make local updates easier to trace. The launch pairs a lifetime of military and public service with a company’s bet that identity verification can restore some trust to an internet crowded with anonymous posts and AI-generated noise.
Sergeant Major Mary L. Aurtrey, U.S. Army (Retired), was honored Wednesday at the Julia M. Carson Government Center as Indiana became the first state in CityByApp’s planned “Founding 50” rollout, according to WIBC 93.1 FM. The ceremony included a Distinguished Hoosier proclamation from Gov. Mike Braun, a city proclamation naming July 29 “Mary L. Aurtrey Day,” and the Sheila Corcoran Hoosier Women Hero Award presented on behalf of Rep. André Carson.
Aurtrey served 22 years in the Army, including assignments in Korea, Germany and Belgium, before retiring as a sergeant major in 1991. She later spent 25 years as a federal civil servant at the Defense Finance and Accounting Service in Indianapolis, according to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. Her earlier Indiana honors include the Governor’s Torchbearer Award, documented by the Indiana Commission for Women.
From veteran recognition to statewide access
The app launch is being handled by CityByApp, a private civic-publishing company, rather than a new state newsroom. The company says its platform is built for identity-verified local governments, school districts, nonprofits, licensed businesses and approved media outlets, with no anonymous accounts, automated bots or algorithm deciding which updates get seen, according to CityByApp.
Indiana residents, businesses and community organizations are now eligible to claim free verified profiles across all 92 counties. The rollout covers nearly seven million residents and roughly 719,000 registered businesses, with the initial activation funded by corporate sponsors Blue Sky Financial Partners and Centers for Digestive Health rather than public tax dollars, WIBC 93.1 FM reported.
The pitch is verification in an AI-saturated news cycle
CityByApp’s timing is aimed squarely at a growing problem in local information: content that looks like news but offers little accountability behind it. NewsGuard reported that it had identified 3,749 AI content-farm sites by June 23, including operations that publish large volumes of unreliable or misleading material, according to the organization’s AI Tracking Center.
The public concern is not imaginary, though the best-known polling cited in the rollout is not Indiana-specific or especially new. A 2023 survey from the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that 65% of adults favored technology companies labeling all AI-generated content on their platforms.
What the app does—and does not do
CityByApp says the current platform does not generate content and has no AI features; a separate product called ByApp.ai is in development for 2027 and is expected to include AI-assisted publishing tools with clear labels. That distinction means the Indiana rollout is being sold less as an artificial-intelligence product than as a source-identification system, according to the company’s description.
For Aurtrey, the technology launch is an extension of a service record that has already included work with women veterans, homeless veterans and Indianapolis community organizations. For Indiana’s residents, the more practical test will be whether a verified byline or organizational profile actually makes local alerts and civic information easier to trust than the usual anonymous post floating through the feed.
