Risk mitigation, education top counties’ AI prep goals

Members of NACo’s Artificial Intelligence Exploratory Committee spent a year considering the capabilities, opportunities, threats and best practices that the rapidly developing technology sector poses for county governments.

After releasing the AI County Compass in 2024, committee members and their partners are continuing to spread the word about how county officials can approach AI adoption in their work. Committee Chair Andy Brown, Travis County, Texas’ judge, and fellow committee member Shinica Thomas, chair of the Wake County, N.C. Board of Commissioners, spoke to Fred Humphries, corporate vice president of U.S. Government Affairs for Microsoft during the March 3 General Session at NACo’s Legislative Conference.

Humphries praised the exploratory committee’s work and the AI County Compass report, stressing that a framework was the crucial first step when introducing artificial intelligence in any workplace, even more so when working in the public sector.

“You need to really be thinking about what you need to have to mitigate risk for a county, for the services that you're providing. But at the same time, the power of AI and the future of AI, I think, comes from the efficiencies, the innovations, the collaboration. But the most important aspect is that you’ve got to use it,” Humphries said. “It’s important to not be afraid of artificial intelligence. It’s here, we use it every day.”

Humphries stressed having a trusted vendor who understands what data a county is protecting, and its importance to the public that interacts with it, and Thomas concurred.

“We want to be mindful that counties have a lot of data and the privacy of that data is important to us and to our constituents,” she said.

Although Humphries stressed infrastructure and policies that would emphasize data security, he cautioned against being constrictive to the point of stifling innovation.

“I'd be very careful with the barriers to innovation we need to have that freedom to innovate but then at the same time, yeah, we need to make sure there's balance on privacy and there's balance on security and what the responsibilities are,” Humphries said.

Throughout all of that planning, the focus should be on the end users, particularly constituent service.

“At the end of the day, what AI does is about efficiencies, it's about collaboration, it's about providing the information, it's a resource that you can take advantage of,” Humphries said, noting that he admired Montgomery County, Md.’s use of artificial intelligence in its 311 chatbot, dubbed Monty 2.0.

Brown mused about the advances in the field in the less than two years since he got involved in the committee.

“When we started, it was almost an exotic thing and now it's obviously everywhere and kind of pretty much unavoidable,” Brown said.

Thomas stressed that user education would be a critical part of any county’s AI rollout.

“You really want to make sure that the workforce is aware of the opportunities that are out there and that we are doing our best as counties to help folks up-skill so that they can use the technology in whatever the work that they are doing is,” she said.

Like any new technology, mastering artificial intelligence will take some new skills, Humphries said, “different skills you never thought about, like how to prompt. What you put in is going to determine what you get out.”

Humphries was optimistic that government could be a leader in driving more artificial intelligence adoption, just by virtue of its interactions with the public. He said the Trump administration has shown an interest in the development of artificial intelligence as far back as 2019.

“These next four years… will be consequential,” he said. “The world is looking at the U.S.” and aligning the federal, state and local policies on artificial intelligence will be critical.

“When adoption takes place in government, believe it or not, it picks up on the consumer side and other places, because so many people interact so much with the government.”