The South Burlington Public Library & City Hall. Photo courtesy of the Other Paper.This story by Liberty Darr was first published in the Other Paper on March 20.What role does artificial intelligence have in Vermont’s local governments?While not many towns or cities across Vermont are asking t hemselves that question yet, South Burlington, the state’s second largest city, is beginning to look at how the tool could expedite tedious municipal minutiae.It’s been a large part of what Nick Gingrow, the city’s IT director, and Anna Dabrowski, the city’s data manager, have been working on the last couple of months. The duo, along with the help of the city’s legal team, are putting the finishing touches on a new artificial intelligence policy that will guide how the city uses and implements AI going forward.“We’re working on an AI policy so that we have good best practices set in place before people start using it to make sure that all of the city’s data — and (that of) everyone who lives in South Burlington — is used appropriately and safely before we start getting into utilizing it,” Gingrow said.While a slew of AI tools — even those that wouldn’t be easily recognizable as such — are already readily available for the standard consumer, using the new technology in government is not as cut and dried. Since sensitive data and information is largely a part of the work a local municipality does, ensuring each tool is up to government security standards is on the forefront of city employees’ minds.Gingrow has been collaborating with a San Jose, California-based initiative known as GovAI Coalition, a coalition of municipal governments around the country that are looking into how to government’s can use AI responsibly, appropriately and efficiently. South Burlington is the only Vermont city or town in the coalition.One of the first projects the city has been looking into is an artificial intelligence tool from Microsoft known as Copilot, which integrates with apps like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook and Teams.South Burlington’s city staff, across all departments, gathered last week for their first training session on the topic. Gingrow said the topics ranged from using artificial intelligence to take meeting minutes or drafting bid proposal requests for certain projects throughout the city.“That’s one of the first things that we’re looking at,” he said. “Creating (a request for proposals) from scratch can take a lot of work. So, if you could use AI to create a draft version based on three or four or five other RFPs you’ve done in the past, you could maybe get a draft version in minutes that might have taken you all day before.”For Dabrowski, artificial intelligence could open even greater doors for analyzing data in ways that may not have been doable before. But part of the draft policy, Gingrow said, asks staff to still go through everything generated by AI to ensure its accuracy. The tools, after all, are exactly that: tools meant to enhance staff skillsets, not replace them.“We want to be careful with how we’re using these tools as well and making sure that they’re working correctly for the kinds of things people want to be doing with their data,” she said.Dabrowski noted that, as a part of the work, the city is rolling out an internal pilot program that could allow troubleshooting for each proposed ideas in a given department.“So, we’ll take those kinds of proposals, and then we’ll take a look and review those internally and say, ‘Okay, does this make sense for a pilot project?’” she said. “When we say pilot, we mean a project with a pretty tight time balance and a short turnaround so we can get feedback directly from those users to understand is this tool actually helping or not.”But Gingrow said, the advanced technology is not just going to benefit city staff, it also is geared toward helping city residents. He noted a feature on the city website already in use that is technically an artificial intelligence tool thatallows the entire website to be translated into any language that Google Translate supports.He noted the city might add a chatbot to the website, which would make navigating to certain tabs easier for people.“It’s just making our information more accessible,” he said.Not bots?Not all towns share the same thoughts about the growing tool. For the neighboring town of Shelburne, town manager Matt Lawless said the town does not have any major AI projects in motion and overall, he remains relatively skeptical about the topic.Like South Burlington, Shelburne is also a Microsoft shop, and while some Copilot tasks might help staff with research and drafting, there are no plans in the works to move towards looking at AI on the same scale as its neighboring city. Lawless noted that some of the town’s contract engineers and attorneys are beginning to use automated research assistants and as the city upgrades its financial software, the new system will be able to autofill invoices, which does save staff time.“I think the greater governance challenge is one of human relationships,” he said. “From Town Meeting Day to my open-door policy, building trust among neighbors is key to our success. I hate the idea of bots making complaints and bots answering them.”That’s a relatively common concern shared across all spectrums, Gingrow said, and one the city of South Burlington has thought long about. On a macro scale, Gingrow noted that as AI continues to grow it is likely to threaten some jobs, just as other advancements in technology has done in the past.South Burlington remains focused on looking to better streamline processes while creating more capacity for its employees as they navigate their endless to-do lists.“If you can save two hours here or there by using this tool, it just gives you two hours to work on another project,” he said. “There’s a lot of ideas and projects that people have to work on.”Read the story on VTDigger here: South Burlington explores using AI to streamline work. ...read more read less