Alongside many organizations, state and local governments are exploring Generative AI (GenAI) opportunities to improve efficiency, empower employees, and ultimately deliver exceptional services to citizens.
The City of Amarillo, Texas, for example, has developed an innovative GenAI fueled digital assistant – dubbed “Emma” – that will launch in October to help respond to resident questions.
Rich Gagnon, the assistant city manager and chief information officer (CIO) for the City of Amarillo, said during MeriTalk SLG’s latest webinar: “How Can Generative AI Enhance the State and Local Government Experience?” that the idea for Emma was born out of Texas’ work to close the digital divide and provide broadband services to every home.
Gagnon said through that process, he learned a lot about his community – from a middle school that has 62 different languages and dialects to a large senior citizen population that is not comfortable with technology.
Emma, the CIO said, will serve as a “multilingual concierge” on the city’s website.
“You can think of her as really just another 311 agent that just happens to reside on our website and ingests everything on the site as her brain,” Gagnon said.
“We learned very quickly that just bolting on GenAI to our existing website was going to fail,” Gagnon said. “So, we worked department by department to determine what really needs to be on our website. What do people want to have a conversation about?”
“What we found out is 90 percent of what we have on our website nobody cared about,” he said. “Emma is in [development]. We’re two thirds done with departments. Departments are testing internally, and then we’re bringing in resident groups that will sit with Emma.”
The CIO continued, “We’re bringing residents in to ask questions about our services in the way they would ask the questions, so that we can make sure that context is good and we’re getting good answers. And then in October, we’ll actually launch her – she’ll go live, and we’ll have a 1.0 and then move straight into our 2.0 roadmap.”
Gagnon highlighted that he sees Emma playing a role in disaster recovery and emergency management. “We just had 200-year floods and struggled with communicating to our residents where to get help, what areas were flooded, where shelter was, and then even after, how to fill out the forms to get help,” the CIO said, emphasizing that he hopes Emma will help streamline this process in the future.
During the testing phase for Emma, Gagnon said he was surprised by both the internal and external results of the GenAI chatbot.
“Some of our internal testers tell me that Emma is now their favorite coworker,” he said. “They’re already seeing a use case for internally, even with our 311 operators, as a very quick way to get answers.”
The CIO also highlighted that through their testing of Emma with senior citizens, the City of Amarillo has found a greater need for a companion amongst this group.
“My mother spent two hours talking to Emma – it goes from city services to the grandchildren to recipes,” Gagnon said. “We’re actually doing some projects in partnership with our digital literacy program with seniors. We’re thinking about, do we provide a companion that’s designed by our senior population, and do a little research around that?”
“[Emma] is making information easy to get,” he concluded. “It makes it very accessible, so everyone can have access to the same services, no matter where they are on their technical capability scale or what language they speak natively.”
Las Vegas Leverages GenAI to Improve Safety for Tourists
Chief Innovation and Technology Officer for the City of Las Vegas, Michael Sherwood, highlighted during the webinar that GenAI helps officials in making decisions that better the safety of the city’s residents and visitors.
“With GenAI specifically, we do a lot with traffic patterning and understanding how vehicles move and traverse our downtown. [It] helps us with light timing, helps us understand traffic patterns and flow. Obviously, one of the things we want people to do is enjoy themselves and be safe. So, understanding how people move,” Sherwood said. “We look through mountains of data that we collect through sensors and through data systems, we use GenAI to analyze that information and really provide leadership with good, real-time information.”
He also highlighted how Las Vegas is using GenAI in more innovative ways, such as to help with the safety of abandoned buildings.
“Now with Gen AI, we’re looking at all of the abandoned or buildings that are under a compliance issue, and trying to figure out through GenAI, do we have a problem here? Is one of these abandoned buildings going to burn down and cause a safety threat to the immediate surrounding houses or to the community?” Sherwood said.
“So really tapping and leveraging AI and our partners helping us build these great solutions, which not only help the community, but help our tourists that come – it really makes Las Vegas a better place to live,” he added.
Hernan Londono, an AI strategist at Dell Technologies, said that “nearly all states are making progress with GenAI.”
“They may be in different places in their journeys, but everybody’s working on certainly the research, which was the very initial part of this journey,” Londono said. “Understanding things like acceptable, ethical, and responsible use … Many states are already framing their guidance or regulation for GenAI.”
Senior Business Development Manager at NVIDIA, Alex Pazos, offers advice to get started with GenAI: encourage a culture of experimentation; invest in ongoing training and development programs; and leverage leadership support.
Register to watch the entire webinar on demand to explore what state and local governments are learning as they assess, test, and deploy GenAI capabilities.
