Florida Digital Counties Winners: Palm Beach County

This week, Government Technology and the Center for Digital Government* shared the annual list of Digital Counties winners, which included seven Florida counties. Today’s story will be the first of six, highlighting each county’s achievements. Stay tuned to Industry Insider — Florida for the other six counties coming next week.

Kicking off this year’s list is Palm Beach County, which won eighth place within the 1 million or more population category.

A few of Palm Beach County, Fla.’s IT priorities include expanding information transparency, increasing collaboration for more effective customer experiences, improving constituent and business engagement, closing the digital divide, and reducing business operating and long-term costs. One way the county is working toward these goals is by implementing a Connect PBC mobile app. In general, the app’s directive is simple: provide a direct line of communication between residents and county representatives. The app also allows residents to submit nonemergency service requests or tips based on their geographic location.

Palm Beach County is also working on a pilot program that uses proprietary and open source large language models to help residents interpret policies and land development codes, as well as frequently asked questions and other help desk services. Other notable tech efforts include streamlining operations, improving efficiency and enhancing decision-making processes for county agencies with the help of automation and generative AI. In this case, the county is specifically applying the tech to payment processing, claims intake and verification, eligibility assessments, expense reimbursements for county employees, and other finance-related processes. The county is also focusing on integrating conversational and transactional chatbots and voicebots within its traditional interactive voice response systems over the next 12 to 18 months. The goal is to use this technology to bolster communication channels and public engagement by providing residents with new ways to interact with county services.

*Government Technology and the Center for Digital Government are sister organizations of Industry Insider — Florida, and their parent company is e.Republic.