Welcome back to The Edge, CogAbility's monthly AI briefing for state and local government innovators.
Ready to see how governments across the nation are using AI?
Let’s dive in!
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🔥 What’s In This Issue
- 🔍 Local AI is going operational: Cities are moving from pilots to production—property assessment, digital twins, and 311 are leading.
- 🚀 States set the pace: Pennsylvania emerges as AI-ready; Oregon partners with Nvidia to build the next-gen public workforce.
- 🧠 Upskilling over tool sprawl: DOJ/Idaho guidance underscores training staff to use AI responsibly—before buying more tools.
- 📄 Guardrails are catching up: Privacy, translation-access, and court admissibility standards clarify where AI fits in service delivery.
- 💼 Show me the money: GFOA budgeting tips, NASPO procurement playbooks, and new grants streamline how agencies fund AI.
🚀 Local Innovators
Training city staff on AI now can lead to better service delivery later, leaders say — San Jose is building employee AI/data skills to improve frontline service delivery.
Metaverse takes ‘guesswork’ out of Georgia city’s planning, official says — Peachtree Corners is using a digital twin to model development choices and reduce risk.
ISTELive 25: 9 AI Ethics Scenarios (and What School Librarians Would Do) — Real-world school scenarios test responsible AI responses for district staff.
California’s fire protection agency made an AI chatbot. Don’t ask it about evacuation orders — Cal Fire is piloting an AI assistant while limiting life-safety advice to official channels.
Why cities are turning to AI for property assessments — Assessors see AI helping with valuation accuracy and workload—while managing fairness concerns.
🏛️ State Innovators
Pennsylvania is a Top 3 state for government AI readiness — Code for America ranks PA among leaders for AI leadership, capacity, and capabilities.
Oregon’s governor made a deal with Nvidia to get AI education in Oregon schools. What does it mean? — State pact seeds AI curricula and faculty training to build long-term workforce capacity.
State and local governments need a unified approach to cybersecurity — Shared AI-enabled defense and standards can reduce fragmentation across jurisdictions.
Justice pushes agencies to use AI-assisted translations—when offering them at all — DOJ guidance nudges measured adoption to expand language access where appropriate.
How ‘continuous innovation’ means more than product launches — Maryland’s product-centric approach reframes modernization and staffing for AI era.
📚 Insights & Best Practices
The silent crisis in government customer experience — Digital wins miss residents without inclusive design and human-centered AI rollout.
5 ways to improve AI results in government data projects — Practical steps to boost model quality, governance, and adoption for public sector teams.
NASCIO: AI Governance Toolkit for States — Templates and guardrails for policy, risk, and procurement alignment across agencies.
AI in State & Local Government: What Works — Evidence-backed practices for measurable resident outcomes and accountability.
Local Government AI Maturity Model — A staged path for cities/counties to scale responsibly from pilots to enterprise use.
🦄 Tools, Apps and New Features
Idaho OIT preps statewide AI usage guidance — Playbook aims to standardize tool selection, privacy, and transparency across agencies.
New AI features for 311 and digital service portals — Vendors roll out triage, auto-drafting, and analytics to speed request resolution.
AI transcription gains for language access — Accuracy and review workflows improve inclusivity for resident communications.
AI pilots to watch in U.S. cities (Q3 2025) — Roundup of the most practical, resident-facing deployments now scaling.
How states are adopting agentic AI — Early use cases show workflow automation and guardrails for mission-critical services.
📄 AI Policy & Legislation
States revisit AI “moratorium” debate — New proposals weigh innovation incentives against local control and resident safety.
Resident data protection rules for AI — Cities refine privacy notices, retention limits, and opt-outs for AI-enabled services.
White House updates guidance for state & local AI — OMB refresh outlines risk tiers, human oversight, and transparency expectations.
Public-sector unions respond to AI — Bargaining agendas target training, redeployment, and guardrails for automation.
AI evidence in court: what local governments should know — Admissibility and auditability standards are evolving—counsel should prepare now.
💼 Procurement & Budgeting
Budgeting for AI in local government — GFOA guidance on funding models, TCO, and sustainment for AI programs.
How to write an RFP for AI — Practical RFP language, evaluation criteria, and pilot-to-scale pathways you can reuse.
NASPO AI Procurement Playbook — State procurement leaders outline risk, IP, data, and performance clauses for AI buys.
Grants to fund AI: what local leaders should know — Where to find dollars, match requirements, and reporting for AI projects.
Budget worries prevent more IT modernization — Survey reveals AI ambitions outpacing current funding and staffing plans.
🆕 What’s New At CogAbility: eDocketing w/ GenAI
We now offer a proven CJIS-secure eDocketing solution for Clerks of Court that is easier on staff and significantly less expensive than current NLP-based solutions.
Clerks of Court review millions of electronic court documents filed each day by prosecutors, plaintiffs, defense lawyers, and more. Clerk staff spend a lot of their time manually reviewing (“docketing”) eFiled court documents, despite the fact that many require minimal or very simple reviews.
This kind of repetitive work can burn staff out and is prone to errors and delays that impact court schedules.
What is eDocketing?
An eDocketing solution automate the intake, review, and approval of court documents filed by third parties related to a case. Several kinds of AI are used to accomplish this.
eDocketing has been around for years, but most rely on older NLP models that require staff to label documents and train custom models before going live. They can be brittle, too - when document formats change, you have to re-train the models.
The high cost required to deploy & maintain NLP-based eDocketing is why mostly large jurisdictions have implemented it.
What’s changed: eDocketing with GenAI
A proven capability of modern GenAI models like GPT-4o and Claude 3.7 is analyzing documents and extracting insights from them; in fact, many LLMs can do this better than humans today.
We’ve leveraged this to build a simpler & less-expensive eDocketing solution that requires far less time, cost and effort to deploy and run. We’ve also proven we can go live with it in 90 days.
Our eDocketing solution is used today by county clerks in GA and FL, with many more interested.
Why This Matters
Our new eDocketing course demonstrates the cost & labor advantages of using LLMs/GenAI models for document reviews & reasoning. This can be used to automate almost every document-centric process, not just court documents.
Bottom-line, LLM-based document processing handily beats older NLP-based solutions on cost, complexity, and effort to deploy.
This means more clerks around the country can now use AI to automate document reviews, which is the kind of change we’re proud to lead ;-)
💪 Interesting in learning how AI can empower your team?
Our recently-updated CogUniversity Course Catalog describes the 18 jobs CogBots are doing for government agencies today.
Discounts apply for existing customers and multi-course purchases.
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