“We all do better when we all do better.” A quote by former Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone, Jaime Wascalus shared this credo at the start of her keynote presentation at the 2024 ICMA Annual Conference. It’s something that she and her fellow Minnesotans live by, and it truly captures the spirit of the GovAI Coalition.  

By day, Wascalus is the director and chief information officer of the Office of Technology and Communications for the city of Saint Paul, Minnesota. But her work with the GovAI Coalition over the past year is helping local government make huge strides in the adoption of AI.  

Composed of over 1,000 members and over 350 local, state, and federal entities, the GovAI Coalition was established in November 2023 to give local government a voice in shaping the future of AI and to promote responsible and purposeful AI in the public sector. Their five major areas of focus:

• Using AI for social good. 
• Ensuring ethical, nondiscriminatory, and responsible AI governance.
• Promoting vendor accountability.
• Improving government services. 
• Fostering cross-agency collaboration and knowledge sharing.

Wascalus and her colleagues are on a mission to spread the word about the coalition and shared its mission and their accomplishments thus far, the resources available, and how communities can get involved. 

An Impressive Beginning

Not even a year old, the GovAI Coalition has already been tremendously helpful to its members and others who have taken advantage of the resources they have available. 

Wascalus shared a quote from a technology partnerships officer from a city in California: 

“It’s exhilarating and validating that many government agencies are in the same boat as us, trying to cut through the hype and understand how AI systems can be procured and deployed in a responsible manner. It’s empowering to collaborate with like-minded leaders and share best practices.”

In their quest to provide support for implementation of AI across the public sectors, the GovAI Coalition has developed templates, policies, use case templates, vendor agreements, and response plans. They have created an AI registry to gather essential information from vendors. They produced the wildly popular AI Starter Kit: Guidance on implementing AI, A Buyer's Guide to Enterprise Generative AI Tools, and AI safety and deep fake education materials. Learn more through via guide to the GovAI Coalition deliverables.

Committees and Their Work

Wascalus gave an overview of the five committees that are really guiding the incredible work accomplished thus far. She mentioned that anyone interested in getting involved on a specific committee who feels they have helpful expertise to contribute should reach out to her.

Cooperative Purchasing Committee: Developing a repository to make AI contracts searchable for GovAI members, and creating guidance for shareable contracts within the membership.

Adoption Support Committee: Helping jurisdictions adopt templates and train staff to become their organization's in-house AI experts.

Policy Committee: Working on updates to the AI Fact Sheet and vendor agreement and exploring the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity (C2PA).

Use Cases Committee: Four subcommittees are focusing on use cases around LLMs, object detection, translation, and transportation. They hold monthly vendor demos, and they’re working with a federal partner to focus on public benefits administration. 

External Affairs Committee: Fostering partnerships and guiding their Phase 3 work, including their first meeting later this year.

GovAI Coalition Summit 

The group is excited to host their first event, the GovAI Coalition Summit in San Jose, California, December 4–5, 2024. Wascalus emphasized, “This isn't an IT conference; it’s an everyone conference.” Education sessions will be geared toward city and county managers, elected officials, and those who want to help guide AI adoption across their cities and counties. It’s a great chance to explore the complexities of AI at the local level and learn more about effective vendor partnerships, data governance, and social impact. 

Learn More and Get Involved

There are numerous resources available from the GovAI Coalition , and you don’t have to be a member to access them. But Jaime encourages communities to consider becoming a member. “This is a really fast-evolving space, and the more people we have involved, the better it will be for us to help shape this for the public sector.”

Check out the GovAI YouTube Channel for step-by-step tutorials that explain how to use the Coalition's policy templates.

ICMA’s Voices in Local Government podcast had a special episode, “GovAI Coalition — Your Voice in Shaping the Future of AI,” in April 2024. Listen here.

Follow the 2024 ICMA Annual Conference through ICMA TV!