Digital Counties 2025: San Bernardino County Leverages AI, Data to Enhance Services

In this year's Digital Counties awards program, the Center for Digital Government* named San Bernardino County its sixth-place winner for the largest population category.

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

San Bernardino County took a sixth-place spot in this year’s Digital Counties awards, joining two other California jurisdictions in the survey’s largest population category. The Southern California county has taken a strategic approach to its technology initiatives under the leadership of CIO Lynn Fyhrlund, focusing on enhancing service delivery, bolstering efficiencies and reducing costs wherever possible. To enhance services, the county has created a Business Relationship Management division and improved its CRM systems to build out its analytics capabilities through Microsoft Dynamics 365.

Like many regional governments, San Bernardino County is also working to leverage artificial intelligence to maximize operational impacts. The Innovation and Technology Department introduced GitHub Copilot within its Solutions Development team to build applications more quickly, with a reported 30 percent reduction in project timelines as well as minimized code errors. In a similar vein, the Wordly translation platform has been deployed for real-time translations during board meetings.

The county has also embraced drone innovations and policy work through the San Bernardino International Airport UAS Center, which has helped to standardize the governance framework for departments interested in using drone technology. This initiative also includes the use of Esri’s GIS platform to digest aerial data-gathering work. An enterprise agreement with Esri ensures that all departments with a need for this data have unrestricted access.

Data has also played a big role in the county’s response to homelessness. GIS technology and the data it enables have been implemented across the annual point-in-time count of unsheltered and sheltered homeless populations. This has been especially useful when it comes to targeting outreach and volunteer efforts.

San Bernardino County has also made significant headway in protecting its valuable networks from bad actors. In 2024, the Countywide Information Security Program expanded and now includes a Threat Intelligence team to monitor and counter incoming threats. The county has also beefed up its phishing simulation program to include progressive models to test employee awareness. And after nearly a decade of planning, the county headquarters was moved from San Bernardino to Colton, offering staff a state-of-the-art facility and better access to tech talent.