The chief AI officer role has gained significant traction in recent years. At the federal level, former President Joe Biden’s October 2023 executive order on AI, since repealed by President Donald Trump, has helped to galvanize its usage. The emergence of the chief AI officer, or a similarly named role, has also gained ground at the state level, including in Arkansas, Maryland, New Jersey, South Carolina and Vermont.
State officials have publicly touted the value of such a position; for example, New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy credited the state’s Chief AI Strategist Beth Simone Noveck for her role in helping thousands of government workers receive generative AI training.
So, is a similar trend being seen at the local level?
“What we’ve heard more of is cities finding it necessary to appoint someone who is the ‘AI lead,’ who can be the champion of AI-driven change across the organization,” said Christopher Jordan, a senior specialist on urban innovation at the National League of Cities.
Earlier this month, Luzerne County, Pa., appointed Vito DeLuca to serve as chief AI officer. County Manager Romilda Crocamo told the County Council via email that the position’s creation “underscores the county’s commitment to embracing cutting-edge technology to enhance operations and service delivery,” as reported by the Times Leader. But Luzerne County is not the first local government to implement such a role.
Gilbert, Ariz., elevated its Assistant Chief Technology Officer Eugene Meija to serve as the chief AI strategy and transformation officer in November 2023. Meija previously told Government Technology that his role will guide the city’s high-level approach to AI so Gilbert can “move at the speed of business.”
The AI lead, Jordan underlined, does not always go by the name of “chief AI officer.” While states and larger municipalities like New York City are designating a chief AI officer role, he explained that smaller cities and governments with greater constraints on resources may instead opt to designate AI as a supplementary piece of an existing IT role, such as a CIO or CTO. CDOs have also been tasked with helping organizations navigate AI.
In Tempe, Ariz., Chief Data and Analytics Officer Stephanie Deitrick led the charge to craft and release an AI use policy for the city. Jordan said that the “generative AI moment,” referring to its uptick in 2022, serves as a reminder of the importance of well-governed, clean and accessible data in an organization.
In Long Beach, Calif., AI work will be guided not by a chief AI officer but by a part-time, temporary AI fellow position, which “is pivotal in advancing our broader technology strategy and our AI readiness,” Ryan Kurtzman, the city’s technology partnerships officer, said via email.
And while the name of and process behind creating such a role may vary in different cities, Jordan argued that an AI lead in some form is important for three key reasons: 1) supporting AI readiness, 2) bridging the gap between the leadership of an organization’s aspirations and its capabilities in meeting them, and 3) signaling that AI is a priority across the government.
“I think the AI lead can be important to ensure that the agency is ready to adopt AI,” Jordan said. “They can oversee the key aspects like data governance, and privacy and security measures, and policy development.”
Designating AI leadership, he said, makes a statement of an organization’s recognition that “the AI moment is distinct from other technological revolutions.”
Not having such a position in place, Jordan said, can pose challenges for cities, primarily in AI readiness and literacy. He argued that both data and organizational change pertaining to AI can be supported by an AI lead.
While local governments in the past year focused largely on policy implementation and AI readiness, Jordan said, he predicted that more AI implementations will be seen in the year ahead.
“If I were to make a prediction for the next year, I would say you’re going to see a lot more pilot use cases in cities around things like language translation,” Jordan said. “I would just expect more and more experimentation.”
