Digital Counties 2025: Placer County Puts AI, Innovation at the Heart of IT Strategy

In this year's Digital Counties awards program, the Center for Digital Government* named San Bernardino County its seventh-place winner for the 250,000 to 499,999 population category.

It was one of seven California counties recognized in the awards.

Placer County is a geographically large and varied county that spans from the Sacramento, Calif., metropolitan area up through the Sierra Nevada and all the way to the Nevada border. That’s a lot of space, but the central IT shop in the county has acquitted itself well, landing at seventh for its population category in this year’s survey. One of the areas where Placer’s tech work really stood out is workforce development. The county invested in leadership development programs, upskilling in AI and cybersecurity, and partnerships with local universities aimed at attracting new talent. Placer is also establishing an Innovation Center of Excellence, where emerging tech can be both piloted and scaled. Leadership training programs around digital transformation and AI governance will also give staff the skills to tackle evolving challenges in perpetuity.

In other AI work, planned initiatives include AI-driven document processing for contract review and compliance, automated cyber threat detection and AI-assisted business intelligence dashboards that support data-driven decision-making. Meanwhile, in terms of cybersecurity, Placer expanded identity and access management, implemented multifactor authentication, and conducted penetration testing for both election security and HIPAA compliance. Perhaps most impressive, however, was that Placer reduced its phish-prone rate below industry standards.

Finally, Placer also did some great public-facing work, including addressing homelessness and immigration through enhanced use of data-driven decision-making, GIS mapping, analytics dashboards and automatic reporting tools. The IT shop there also launched Engage Placer, an interactive platform for residents that features multilingual access and real-time updates.