Authorium has joined the state in the effort, according to a news release from the California Department of Technology, which will have an oversight role in the GenAI initiative: CDT will oversee the use, security and maintenance of the GenAI tool and will provide guidance to ensure that the system is used effectively and responsibly.
“California is embracing emerging technologies and innovation to modernize how we serve the public,” CDT Director and state Chief Information Officer Liana Bailey-Crimmins said in the news release. “By exploring the use of generative AI in legislative workflows, we’re laying the foundation for smarter, faster and more transparent government services.”
The Department of Finance (DOF), CDT and Authorium will use the Amazon Web Services Bedrock platform, which draws from several large language models including Meta’s Llama.
“Today’s announcement is the first milestone in bringing the state closer to possibly using GenAI for operational efficiencies in housing, workforce planning and legislative bill analysis,” CDT says in the news release. “The collective work is ongoing, and the state anticipates completing these projects by summer 2025.”
Authorium was founded by co-CEOs Jay Nath, former CIO for San Francisco, and Kamran Saddique, a serial entrepreneur on three continents for more than 15 years. Another name familiar to California IT professionals is Authorium’s vice president for California business development, Marlon Paulo, formerly the state chief technology procurement officer and director of procurement for Santa Clara County.
“We are honored to be selected by the California Department of Finance to increase efficiency and effectiveness in critical legislative and policy efforts,” Nath and Saddique said in a joint statement. “As a public benefit corporation, we remain fully focused on enabling government teams to modernize operational and administrative processes through our no-code platform.” The two co-founders started a podcast in December focusing on government innovation.
The new initiative is expected to save thousands of hours that DOF team members spend sifting through reams of legislative material, including more than 1,000 legislative bills and proposals annually.
“Working together with Authorium, DOF aims to significantly reduce the manual workload associated with drafting bill analyses, including summarizing a bill, collecting fiscal information from impacted state entities, and parsing relevant data sets and sources for background and historical information,” CDT says.
Gov. Gavin Newsom recently announced the advancement of three new GenAI agreements to integrate the technology into state operations:
- Highway congestion: The California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) will use GenAI to process and interpret complex data to improve its traffic pattern analysis, address bottlenecks, and enhance overall traffic management.
- Public safety: Caltrans will also be using GenAI to investigate near misses of injuries/fatalities to identify risky areas and monitor interventions designed to increase safety of vulnerable road users, including bike riders and pedestrians.
- The California Department of Tax and Fee Administration (CDTFA) will use GenAI to swiftly search more than 16,000 pages of reference materials and assist staff in responding to taxpayers via telephone and live chat.
