Local Governments Appear To Be Lagging Behind In AI

While AI is growing quickly, there are blind spots where new technologies aren’t truly implemented as quickly, as we know.

There is one of these in the municipal realm.

Having witnessed such things myself, I can state that visiting a local government office in the US to address even a minor zoning or permission issue is frequently frustrating for everyone.

Not to mention the bigger picture, which includes attempting to figure out how to pay for local police and fire departments as well as undertaking initiatives like road repair and stormwater quality.

As a result, centralization is happening quickly since many of these tiny local offices lack the resources necessary to run efficiently.

And it appears that one of the main things impeding local government’s progress is probably their inability to obtain the same AI tools that innovators in the private sector are utilizing extensively.

This was posted on Munivers, where Elizabeth the author discusses the unique difficulties faced by municipalities.

“Lack of budget and resources” is the first one cited, and money is frequently a problem. However, the second is opposition to change, when local elected officials or volunteers have opinions that could obstruct the successful implementation of new technologies.

Legacy systems and infrastructure present the third barrier, while privacy and data governance pose the fourth.

“Lack of technical expertise” is the fifth hurdle mentioned by the author.

The third barrier is comprised of legacy systems and infrastructure, while the fourth is related to privacy and data governance.

“Lack of technical expertise” is the fifth hurdle mentioned by the author.

This brings me to an analysis of a presentation given by Russ Wilcox, who explained to us some extra difficulties that local government is facing after seeing a few recent events.

His research indicates that a common issue is turnover.

Additionally, he discussed the “erosion of knowledge,” or the knowledge loss that occurs to a municipality when talented team members depart after a career.

As such, he portrayed people as “guessing” about things like zoning document interpretation.

He also mentioned how many procedures include legalese that only specialists can understand and are intentionally complex.

By definition, local government must be official, but it need not be closed off to the public or so outdated that it cannot be creatively utilized.

You may make the case that, in the worst cases, inefficiencies increase turnover to some degree.

Maintaining quality while working in an office without the required tools is depressing.

Wilcox continues by demonstrating how some of these items should function.

He asserts, “There has to be a better way,” implying that the benefits of using AI in the long run will be substantial.

Quotes from Wilcox: “We can act as a sophisticated digital archive, enabling artists to search any municipality worldwide for documents that aren’t in our database and turn them into a readily searchable database.”

We are examining the effects of rebuilding our cities from the ground up on a global scale. We no longer lose knowledge because someone retires. We can keep that data in a centralized database, which will save developers a great deal of time and money. It will also improve accessibility and teamwork for responsible policy development and the preservation of historic records, eliminating any knowledge gaps that may arise after city employees retire.

Wilcox mentions the value of utilizing unstructured data as well.

In a recent blog post, I discussed how AI can search through unstructured material, such as casual letters and papers, with the use of more potent multicore processors.

It’s not a minor detail. For anything from local government to, say, fraud investigations, this is revolutionary. That unstructured data is lying around in print, on social media, and in other online and offline media outlets, not receiving the attention it merits. We will see a sharp increase in the usefulness of such applications, not only in business but also in local government and our personal life, now that we have the technology to read and understand it.

For instance, Wilcox discusses the transfer of historical data to contemporary systems and users’ access to chatbots of well-known intellectuals from antiquity, highlighting four main possible areas of impact:

Savings of time and resources

Collaboration and accessibility

Maintaining Historical Documents

Changes in Local Government

These are all worthwhile, and it’s clear how they’ll complement one another to strengthen local government authority and improve the services these agencies can provide to the public.

Indeed, it’s likely that local government reforms will occur sooner rather than later. However, as Wilcox and other observers point out, a lot of these offices are far behind the adoption curve because it’s been a while.