Pottawattamie County officials are setting guardrails around how county employees should utilize artificial intelligence, particularly when handling sensitive information.
David Bayer, the county’s chief information officer, said the discussions about a county policy on AI use by employees started last year. “AI is definitely influencing what we read and see every day,” Bayer said. “…It’s everywhere.”
All county employees will have to complete in-person and online training on how to comply with the new policy. “Not just the training on the policy, but also training on how to use AI, what to look for…how do I report or document that I’m using it. All those things will be part of that training,” Bayer said.
The Pottawattamie County Board of Supervisors approved the AI policy this week. It addresses the kind of AI county employees would use. “Tier one would be basic use of AI, so ‘glorified Google search’ kind of stuff where there is no sensitive data and unlicensed AI usage,” said Bayer. “Tier two would be county-licensed AI, meaning we have the licenses and we dole those out as needed to put into more advanced tasks. Then, tier three would be very controlled AI doing highly analytic interal things with sensitive data.”
Bayer said employees should generally avoid putting sensitive data, like criminal justice information, Social Security numbers, names, addresses, and phone numbers, into programs such as ChatGPT. Bayer said they’re creating a system so county employees may notify his department if they believe AI is being misused within county offices. “There’s not going to be a lot of monitoring, other than we’re going to have to rely on each another to know when someone’s misusing it,” Bayer said.
The county’s AI committee is also starting to identify ways AI could be used to make county operations more efficient.
(By Ethan Hewett, KMA, Shenandoah)