NACo's AI County Compass

Hi everyone, happy Friday. It's Joe Morris here from eRepublican Government Technology. It's a pleasure to be with you today. I'm joined by Rita Reynolds, the Chief Information Officer for the National Association of Counties. So Rita, thanks so much for joining me.

Absolutely.

Maybe before we get too deep into our content today, you could tell our audience a little bit about yourself, your background, and how you became involved with NACo.

Sure. So I've spent 37 years working with counties. I started out as a technical consultant for a number of years, and then I moved to working for a state association as their CIO for 20 years. During that time, I helped build the technology programs throughout the state for the counties, and then I also attended many of the NACo conferences, served on their technology committees, and assisted with providing content for some of the various technology events that they had throughout that time. 5 years ago, it just so happened that the opportunity arose that I could apply for the CIO position at NACo, and it really was very similar to the work I'd been doing at the state association.

Mm-hmm.

So happy to report that I was hired to fill that role, and the focus mainly— while I oversaw internal IT for some of the time, I was really focused on creating and implementing a strategy that would provide networking opportunities as well as design services and programs for county IT leaders. And we've developed a very large network of over almost 1,200 county IT leaders in our Tech Exchange Network. And during this time, we've focused on, of course, key initiatives around cybersecurity and data governance. And more recently, AI, GenAI guidance and resources. And I can say it's, uh, the fast years has— the 5 years has gone really fast.

No, you're right. I think that, you know, you walk through the evolution of the, those talk tracks and those focus areas that we've all had in this space, whether it's been cybersecurity, mobility, that the topic of the day absolutely has been AI across the state and local landscape. And, you know, you've all released this county compass, this AI county compass, this toolkit for local government guidance around the implementation implementation of generative AI. Maybe you could let us know how that came to be, who was involved, and how did it ultimately all come together?

Sure. You know, ChatGPT hit the world with full force at the end of 2022. I remember over the holidays, I had been talking with a partner, an individual, and they said, have you tried this yet? And I'm like, nah, I'll get to it. And I'll never forget, get back in the office January, and sometime in January I was looking at ChatGPT, which is what really started the firestorm. And the very first question I asked of it was, give me 3 icebreakers for an upcoming technology meeting. I'm terrible at icebreakers. In a matter of 10 seconds, I had it done. And I was like, oh my goodness, this is going to be interesting. So fast forward a couple of months because I don't think anyone was quite sure how the staying power was, if it was there yet or not. But by the time we got into March, it became apparent that generative AI was a revolution that was going to have significant impacts for local government and for all of us in the IT profession. I, along with many others, have acknowledged this is the most significant event in our technology careers. For me, I've been doing this for 37 years, and I can tell you, definitely, it surpasses Y2K, anyone that was around back then. And even when you start reading about generative AI, you quickly see that it has the equivalent of when the internet started being used across the world. So we quickly internally, at first we're saying maybe we absorb this into our committees, but within 24 hours of that conversation, it was, we need an exploratory committee that can better understand the technology and what are the benefits, what are the challenges, what's the direction and guidance that we can provide at a national level to counties. So the committee was formed. It consisted of 16 county individuals, most elected officials, a couple county CIOs, IT leaders, and then a couple of our state association representatives and 1 or 2 department directors. So one may say, well, if that's not a real good number, I said, well, we made it small on purpose for the educational piece, but we also recognize that throughout the year, which we knew it was going to take a year or more to really do a good approach, develop a good approach, and also understand what AI and generative AI really are about. Committee quickly realized, okay, AI is not anything new, but now it's front and center because of generative AI. In order to adequately develop this publication, the county, as you said, the AI County Compass, we wanted to make sure that There was more than just the 16 members of the committee involved. And so 4 workgroups were formed. I know we'll talk a little bit about those later, and it included broader participation from county government. Definitely a lot more IT representation, but also department directors from finance and other areas. And we broke them into 4 workgroups. So you didn't have to serve on every workgroup. You might be on one of them, you might be on 2, but we always had a committee member or several that were represented in each of those workgroup areas. The 4 workgroup areas: policy, ethics, applications, and workforce. Those really are the basis for the recommendations, which we'll get to a little bit later. I know some of the questions that we're going to cover.

You look at it, you're right. You look back at when ChatGPT showed up on the scene, generative AI really took off and you know, things stand out to me is how quickly it went from shiny object to real implementations in government and what felt like a pretty condensed timeframe compared to what I've seen over the, you know, nearly 20 years of being in this space. But that said, you know, you do remember that first time you engaged with it and that reaction that you had to what was happening and what that might mean, right, to the public sector. And now, even as we find ourselves with a little bit of distance from that, you know, from when it first emerged on the scene, we're still seeing, you know, across local government, probably, you know, counties, cities as well, states too, that even though it's been around a little bit, there's still these like misconceptions or myths that are still out there with regard to the technology. Are there certain myths that you've all seen that maybe are still having an impact into how a county government might approach generative AI or AI at large?

Oh, absolutely. What I'll do is I'll cover a couple. We do have a number listed in the toolkit itself, but there's 2 that stand out for me right now still. And first is the myth that a county can avoid using AI, or using generative AI rather, by not permitting their employees to use the technology. I can assure you, in every county, somebody is using generative AI. And I have heard from a number of counties early on that they took the perspective of, Staff are not allowed to use this tool. And then they came back later and said, well, that didn't work. And someone may say, why didn't it work? Well, you know, just tell employees they're not allowed to do this. This is such a significant and revolutionary technology that employees are going to find ways to utilize the tools that will help them do their job more productively and more efficiently. In local government, we know that so many of our staff are— I want to say overworked, but have so much on their plate and they can't get everything done in a timely fashion. And this generative AI and the different categories of tools can definitely contribute to making all of us even more efficient just in that area alone. And then the other piece of it, why this is a myth, is that It's showing up in your personal life. And so you go home and you might have kids from school now. Early on, schools tried to prohibit it, but they're not doing that now. They're putting guardrails around it. We can talk about that. But the reality is it's not just in your workplace. It's just like the internet. The internet is available, available for personal use. It's available for work use. And so the benefits quickly became evident. So that is definitely a myth.

Yeah, I'm sure you saw that in the data in your survey work too. I mean, I remember informally early on going around and asking people a simple raise of hands, who's leveraging generative AI today at work? A bunch of hands go up. I do that now. How many of you have a policy that— and then not as many hands raised in the room. And it lets you know, like you said, whether you have a policy or not or whether you're ready or not, it's here. And I imagine that your, your kind of findings echo that too.

For sure. The other myth that is still prevalent is the one that says I can turn off the GenAI features in the applications that I'm using or my county staff are using. And the reality is you can try. There, there are definitely ways to turn some of the features off and not allow, for example, the meeting transcriber AIs We can work to prevent them, but I'm going to use a game example. It's like whack-a-mole. You put one out, you don't allow one, and then it's going to pop up somewhere else. That's true with generative AI and AI. The multitude of technology vendors and solution providers that we are already using in local government and really anywhere are incorporating GenAI features into the core of their products.

Yeah.

In some cases, counties don't even know it is happening. I won't name a particular product, but I remember going into a very popular product to approve something, and a screen popped up and said, we are now using generative AI, and I forget the rest of it, click here. It didn't give you a yes or no option. It just said it was an acknowledgment, and it was an acknowledgment I saw because it was tied to my personal account, not to the organization's account. So it's a myth if you think you can turn off all GenAI features in all applications. It's just not going to happen.

Yeah. Shifting gears a bit to the benefits side, I think a lot of the conversation is centered around obviously freeing people up and making the work that we do, you know, making us more productive and hopefully making the careers that we're in more rewarding because of that increased productivity. But one of the benefits that stood out in the work that you all did was going beyond those more obvious benefits around automation and productivity, but you also exposed the possibilities of the benefits being around increasing equity and accessibility. So I thought that was kind of, you know, super interesting, and maybe you can kind of go a little bit deeper on that.

Sure. The use of GenAI in solutions such as like chatbots or website translation and even translation for in-person services is a definite benefit and opportunity for counties in terms of improving equity and accessibility to those that English isn't their first language. It's the multilingual and inclusive services that a county is now able to quickly on their website at a very low cost, add that translation, not just in 2 or 3 languages, but into 20 or 24 languages. And that in and of itself is helping address the equity for certain segments of the population. And that's really important, maybe more so in certain areas of the country, but it is definitely very important across the board and is helping with equity and accessibility. Of course, I can't fix the broadband issue with this, but we'll get there, I hope.

You know, but you're right, it's also not all sunshine and rainbows, and then your report did a good job kind of outlining a lot of the challenges that the counties and local government at large face around this topic. You talked about your working groups earlier around, you know, ethics and, you know, governance, and there's large and important conversations happening around preventing bias and ensuring that we've got ethical implementations of AI in the public sector and how we approach, you know, fairness and auditing and accuracy and all of the things that come along with the use of generative AI. But what other challenges are you seeing that counties are having to confront around their greater use of AI in the public sector?

It's interesting that this is a question for today, as earlier I was conducting a focus group with county IT leaders on data governance, and the very first part of the conversation stemmed around the fact that with AI and GenAI, the importance of the accuracy and knowing where your data is has grown significantly in the past year. We as counties have been tracking and really working to enforce data governance for a long time, but we can't enforce. We can educate, we can guide, we can put certain measures in place. But this became— GenAI and AI actually became the new driving force for why the accuracy of the data is so important. I'll use an example of creating, as I said earlier, a chatbot, and I'm just gonna have it troll my entire county website. Well, guess what? Not all the information you have on your county website is up to date, is relevant, and in some cases might not be accurate. And so that presents a multitude of issues, even including legal and records discovery. So Your county website is a great resource, but you have to make sure underlying data and documents are curated and monitored and managed when you start to incorporate some sort of AI or GenAI-driven solution. It's extremely important, and I wanna say this now if I don't say it later, the human needs to stay in the loop.

Mm-hmm.

As some say, that myth robots are gonna replace us, We're not there anytime soon or ever, and the reality is that we as humans really do have to be involved in these solutions from the beginning to when it's being thought about, identified, and developed, and then rolled out. So back to the importance of the accuracy of the data, I need to make sure it's curated and managed properly, not just me, but all of us responsible for for the data that feeds into these tools.

No, I love it. I love the human-in-the-loop aspects. It's something that we're obviously advocating for and continually kind of shining a light on. And I appreciate you walking through the benefits that we talked about earlier and then the thorniness of some of the challenges that we're confronting with AI. But you also obviously looked at the opportunities, the real potential of what AI can unlock for counties. And so where did you see some of those biggest opportunities being for our counties?

The opportunities really are incredible. In addition to what everyone assumes is just productivity improvement, there's opportunities for improvement of, for example, social service delivery, where the forms that are filled out by the resident that's applying for social services all the way through the profile, even, you know, we've been challenged with integration of various social services systems for years. And I do see opportunities here with AI to improve that. Another area, of course, is public safety and security improvements there, opportunities with AI being incorporated into the video cameras many of us are using, improving the drones that are out there, and also body cameras, things like that. Finally, solutions that can be more customized and localized. One county was talking about what they're doing with their community with homelessness and food banks because that's a major issue in their area. They definitely are seeing solutions driven with AI and GenAI components improving the delivery of those solutions.

It's clear that the toolkit contains more than we can discuss just in this episode here. But we did want to talk about the recommendations that the report had. And you kind of referenced earlier, this wasn't just a report put together by a small committee of like-minded individuals. You know, you focused on policy, you focused on ethics, you focused on the IT applications, you looked at the workforce, you had that broad representation across it. So in light of the recommendations that you had, I think when you look at like our audience and then the Government Technology Radar, What are some steps that they can take? You're a county IT executive, you're in the throes of an implementation right now to make sure that they're out there promoting the use of AI in a meaningful way with all of the right steps in place. What recommendations would you have for them?

Absolutely. I'm going to focus on a couple, not necessarily, of course, as you know, there's quite a few in there. From a policy perspective, We are encouraging, and we will be continuing to provide education on how to develop guidelines, standards, and ultimately policy for your county. It's not a once-and-done process, and many have taken the approach of, I need to put some guidelines in place at least for now. Might not be what we call policy, but we absolutely do need to make sure that there's a minimum set of guidelines and standards So that your employees know what they can and can't do or should not be doing and why. That's really an important— I want to say almost the first step, but close to it. The other piece that we recommend is surveying your county departments, and we have samples of that on the NACo website as well. Easily asking and not being like, we're doing this to get you in trouble. We just want to understand, how are you using Gen AI and AI, if you know, in your department. And so you work with your department leaders. Here's a set of questions. Doesn't have to be real long, but it's really collecting what we call an asset inventory. Not now of just assets, but now it's on AI tools, AI solutions, Gen AI solutions. Really important to do that. And I, I'm going to go out on a limb here and I can bet money that auditors are going to eventually, if they aren't already, starting to look for that when they come in, because it is an area of risk. And so, when you do that survey, now you can start to develop what is our risk right now in these areas. And that is another, under the applications area, a recommendation to identify whether the solutions you are thinking about implementing or are already in place, is it low risk? Is it a medium risk? Is it a high risk? There's certain areas that we know are high risk for sure that all counties will say, oh, we need to stay away from, from right now. And that could be in the social services area, for example, if you're getting into the clinician-type information. However, every county may have a different threshold depending on what use case, as we call it, or what problem they're trying to solve. The other piece I'll focus on for a few minutes here is in terms of workforce. That is a recommend— a set of recommendations that, number one, providing education to all levels of your staff, including your elected officials. And those levels of training are going to be different. There's a basic set of understanding what is GenAI, what is AI. And then there is the developer who needs to understand even more so what's an algorithm, or how do I effectively create code without introducing things like viruses. If I'm a department director, my level of training is a little different, but workforce training is extremely important because we're going to be left behind and it's going to be even harder to fill positions. if we aren't upskilling the staff that we have. Then another recommendation under workforce, look at what your universities are doing, look at what other counties are doing. Where can you partner for educational opportunities, but also sharing of resources of individuals that are skilled in developing strategy for generative AI and AI solutions? So let me stop there. There's so many recommendations, we don't have time to go through all of them today. I just encourage everyone to please, you know, take time to go to our website to download the PDF version of the Compass, but also there's an interactive version right there on the website that you can take a look at. Also within NACo, our events page, you'll see we have different webinars that we're offering as well that are providing additional AI education. So stay tuned because we are tracking this at the national level and at the state level. That's a whole other set of recommendations. You've got to keep an eye on that because the landscape could change real fast depending on what happens from a legislative and regulatory perspective.

Absolutely. But I mean, you hit, you hit some of the most massive you know, ones right there, that the upskilling conversation, the reskilling conversation, AI literacy, uh, all of those things are, are big things that are going to dominate our discussion, you know, for the remainder of this year, going into next year, next year and beyond. And I think that the aspect of like the partnership and community, that steal the good ideas— everyone's working on these policies, everyone's confronting similar things. So where can you Can you lean into a peer? Where can you borrow what the work that they've done and accelerate your adoption process?

Right.

Where can you lean into organizations like NACo to be that advocate for you, to understand kind of where the good work is happening and to help you navigate those challenges? And that's why, you know, we're big fans of the partnership that we have together and the work like this and having the opportunity to shine a bright light on that work because at the end of the day, you know, we can have that thoughtful adoption of technology advance the conversation, what we're here for. So Rita, thank you so much. You saw the link on the bottom of the page. We'll make sure to drop it in the show notes as well and in the article and the direct links back to the organization website as well. But wanted to thank you so much for taking time out of your Friday to join us here on GovTech to walk through the toolkit.

Absolutely. Thank you so much, Joe, for having me. And truly, thank you for the partnership with NACo. for eRepublic's partnership, and of course the, the Center for Digital Government. It's a long-standing partnership, and, uh, we, we're better together. I think that's the, the phrase I always like to say with partnerships, but also for our counties.

Absolutely. Well, Rita, thanks again so much for joining us, and until I see you again, have a wonderful weekend.

Take care.