The Vance County Board of Commissioners likely will discuss and adopt at their April meeting a policy to guide county staff about how and when to use AI when it comes to managing public and county data.
Randall Medlin, the county’s IT director, appeared before commissioners at a Mar. 17 work session to provide details about the draft policy, stating that it was crafted to address three key issues surrounding the county’s use of AI: that it’s used ethically, responsibly and legally; that county staff is aware of any potential biases with regard to its use; and that AI is not replacing a human making a decision in any act.
Medlin said the county will be making three software purchases in the next six months, and they all have an AI component.
He said he’d like to have the policy in place before the county moves forward with those purchases.
County Manager C. Renee Perry said she plans to have adoption of the 7-page policy on the board’s April 6 agenda.
As County Attorney Jonathan Care explained, the policy provides “guiderails” as the use of AI becomes more prevalent and more widely accepted.
“It has the guardrails in there to help eliminate the bad stuff,” Care said.
“It is only using versions that we control the data to. And that’s important, and Randall and I both agree on this, because of all the other considerations you’ve got out there, the most common one that we don’t think about that I see as being the biggest hurdle is creating public records. We’ve got to own it and control it. We’ve got to limit – to the extent we can – the number of public records that we inadvertently create by using AI. This policy definitely has the guardrails in that addresses my concerns practically and legally, but also, more importantly, addresses the IT concerns that are much more informed that I feel need to be in there.”
Medlin said the policy doesn’t prescribe how to authorize and use AI but instead offers parameters for use. “If you’re going to use AI, it can’t do this and it must do this,” he said.
The policy states that county departments that do use AI must create an annual report to present to the board and to the public at large to ensure transparency.
The report will contain information about which AI programs are being used and how they are being used and how it fits in their “chain” or scope of work.
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