Robert Reynolds, chief information officer of Orange County, North Carolina, said AI is ideal for helping government workers with “tedious” and “time-consuming” tasks.
“AI will benefit local governments in the future. But like any tool, guidelines are needed,” he said.
Without guidance, local governments are at risk of employees using different tools without administrative control, Reynolds said. “There needs to be some governance behind it before it can be rolled out for staff to use.”
Local CIOs look to contractors for AI assistance
Varner said the adoption of AI by local governments is complicated by competition for qualified workers.
“We are in Northern Virginia, and we have competition from the private sector and local universities for that talent,” he said. “As much as we have the budget, it’s a challenge.”
“We're going to see further contraction,” Reynolds added. We will dispatch a Cisco engineer if necessary. ”
He agreed that the public sector is at a disadvantage when it comes to hiring AI talent.
“As the amount of work that needs to be done increases, so does the number of staff,” Reynolds said. “My guy's IT staff is 18 people, and he supports about 1,500 users. Can he support AI innovation? Probably not.”
He added: “We are in close proximity to Research Triangle Park, so we compete with higher salaries in the private sector.”
PTI Executive Director Alan Shirk acknowledged that most small governments simply lack the resources to get started with AI.
“Most local governments are really small. People who want to be here can't be here. It would be nice if we had staff. We don't have that. We want to have all the best tools. But we can't afford it,'' Shirk said during a panel discussion at the IBM Innovation Center in Washington.
read more: State and local CIOs expect AI to benefit digital services.
Local government slowly tests AI use cases
Gregory Scott, CTO and IT director for Fairfax County, Virginia, said the county has policies in place and is starting small by testing AI use cases.
“We have about three initiatives we are working on, including our own private ChatGPT,” he said. The county's goal is to create a vision for how AI can best support public servants in the future.
Reynolds said Orange County is just beginning to develop potential use cases. The county sent a focus group of IT personnel to investigate the use case.
James Grove, vice president of strategic advisory cybersecurity capabilities for the Multistate Information Sharing and Analysis Center and the Election Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center, said successful use cases like these require skilled talent. .
As governments upgrade their security operations centers, human expertise will be needed to adjust for false positives, Grove said. “We need skilled people.”
Grove added that local governments need skilled hires to kick-start their AI efforts, and “we need help defining some simple use cases and putting guidelines in place.” Ta.
