The three-day GovAI Coalition Summit* surfaced several repeating themes among experts, including projections about the technology’s growth potential, equity and access concerns, and policy and leadership gaps, to name a few.
GROWING DEMAND
San Jose CIO Khaled Tawfik told attendees demand for funding for AI solutions is only expected to grow in the coming year — by Gartner’s estimates, by 66 percent in the next budget cycle.
Officials on the technology and administrative fronts should prepare for budgetary requests to increase in step with advances in these platforms.
Getting a firm grasp on AI in the public sector has been challenging, Tawfik told attendees, largely because the solutions are standalone. So far, the market is missing a truly end-to-end solution.
A popular procurement strategy growing in the artificial intelligence space is one in which government organizations choose a vendor to take a project 80 or 90 percent of the way, partnering in the remainder to better shape the solution to specific use cases.
ONBOARDING THE WORKFORCE
If you build it and they don’t come, what was the point? Technology leaders have been scrambling to adopt the latest technologies and implement associated policies, but staff actually have to use these tools. Training and workforce development is one of the major hurdles facing government at this stage — many organizations have adopted tools but now need assistance getting their staffs up to speed.
Don Rocha, with Santa Clara County Water, underscored the need to bring end users into the fold with the tools IT teams make available. This is one area he said his organization could use guidance in the form of consultants and outside expertise.
RISK AND TRUST
A repeating theme throughout the multiday event was the topic of trust between vendors and government.
Governments are increasingly using the leverage created by the abundance of AI and generative AI models to push back on vendors’ “black boxes,” with some officials reporting that they will pass over a solution without cooperation from vendors about how systems use their data.
Officials urged companies to share information into how their products work or risk being passed over in the procurement process.
AI FOR ALL
San Jose Mayor Matt Mahan, along with Google, Anthropic and OpenAI, announced a suite of AI literacy tools for residents of the city. The tools will help guide participants through the various types of the technology while also giving them no-cost access to the technologies from each of the providers.
Beyond that release, public leaders and IT officials were very focused on the issues of access and equity related to the use of and infrastructure needs surrounding the technology.
Likened to more traditional forms of infrastructure — roads, freeways, buildings — the proliferation of data centers and how they might impact low-income and marginalized communities was of major concern for public-sector participants.
LEADERSHIP GAP
While technologists are chomping at the proverbial bit to deploy new tools, the public policy aspects have not kept pace.
State and federal lawmakers reported that there has not been substantive policy at the federal level, which is partly to blame for the patchwork of state and international regulation companies have to contend with.
California Sen. Aisha Wahab said the state has been making progress in establishing cohesive guardrails, with a handful of new AI-focused bills signed into law this session.
ENERGY VAMPIRES INVITED IN
It’s no secret that the infrastructure needed to keep AI alive is power hungry, but even so, many communities across the U.S. are welcoming them with open arms, hoping to capitalize on a new tax revenue stream.
San Jose has made an aggressive push in this space, inking a new power distribution partnership with PG&E to attract builders, said Erica Garaffo, the city’s large-load energy customer development lead.
Not everyone is impressed with the technology or its implications, however. Tamara Kneese, with the Data & Society Research Institute, cautioned that cities and counties should carefully evaluate the promises that often accompany these sorts of projects. Many times, Kneese said, the projects overestimate the jobs they will create while underestimating impacts to the environment and communities where they crop up.
Deeper coverage from the event will follow in the coming days.
*The GovAI Coalition Summit was hosted by Government Technology, Industry Insider — California’s sister publication. Both are part of e.Republic.
