The GovAI Coalition includes members in hundreds of local governments across the country. Map data courtesy City of San José
Last year San José became one of the first U.S. cities to develop guidelines for how government employees and departments use artificial intelligence in their work. Soon other government agencies started looking to the capital of Silicon Valley for guidance. In November 2023, the City of San José formed the GovAI Coalition, a collaborative effort of government agencies, policymakers, and industry partners to develop responsible AI policies and practices for local governments. In a short time, the coalition has grown to more than 800 members representing 300-plus local governments across the country. The agencies range from large cities like Los Angeles, California, with populations in the millions, to small towns like Nederland, Colorado, with just 1,500 residents.
San José launched the coalition in partnership with nine other agencies, with the goals of sharing resources, establishing unified guidelines, and leveraging collective data to build better AI models for improving public services. The coalition has formed working groups to focus on specific use cases such as generating real-time translations of public meetings and predicting traffic patterns for improved bus routes. It aims to amplify the voice of government in shaping AI development while ensuring responsible and effective use of the technology for the benefit of residents.
It’s not every day that local governments around the country work together to develop policy, though they’re often working to find solutions to similar challenges. SPUR talked with San José City Privacy Officer Albert Gehami to learn more about the benefits of taking a collaborative approach.
Why did the City of San José feel it was important to develop policy and guidelines for how city employees and departments use AI?
San José is known as the capital of Silicon Valley and home to major tech companies. From my office in City Hall, I can see both Zoom and Adobe’s headquarters, just two of many local companies that are pushing AI across the globe.
San José is proud to be the home of Cesar Chavez and an incredibly diverse community where more than 50% of our population does not speak English at home. We’re excited about the opportunity AI technology provides to increase the accessibility of city services, but at the same time we need to ensure that we protect residents against any unexpected consequences or risks.
In the process of thinking about the governance of AI in our city, we quickly learned that many other cities were hearing similar concerns and were grappling with similar questions.
It’s a unique model to be sharing resources and doing this work in partnership with other cities. How did the GovAI Coalition come about?
The coalition has and always will be by government, for government.
It started with my teammate Leila Doty saying that we really needed to be thinking about the governance of AI. From there, we launched our guidelines, which outline rules for using generative AI for city work, such as requiring employees to fact check information and publicly letting people know when something was generated by AI. Suddenly we had people from across the country reaching out to me, Leila, and our chief information officer, Khaled Tawfik, asking if they could use our guidelines. We started talking to cities like San Antonio and Austin in Texas; Tri-Met, which is the City of Portland’s rail authority; the Colorado Department of Revenue; the City and County of San Diego; and the City of Cleveland. Just within this small group, we began to see that we were looking at the same AI systems and asking many of the same questions. We began learning from one another.
This past March, we opened up the coalition to others. In addition to government partners, our members now include industry partners, nonprofits, philanthropy, and the public — anyone interested in ensuring that AI is used responsibly and purposefully.
What have been the biggest benefits of doing this work in collaboration with other cities and partners?
We saw two main benefits. The first is the comprehensive and efficient policy development that comes from dividing tasks and leveraging each other’s work. The second benefit is our ability to present a united voice. More than 100 agencies have adopted or are in the process of adopting the GovAI Coalition’s materials, including AI policies and information about vendor expectations. Together, we are able to influence the global conversation on AI development. No one agency is large enough to be able to influence the conversation on the future of AI — but by sharing our common expectations of what these tools should be doing, we have leverage in shaping the industry.
That’s a big deal! What other outcomes do you hope will come from this collaborative effort?
The coalition is focusing on creating use cases for improving quality of life for the people we serve. We have developed working groups to address specific areas like large language models, transportation applications, object detection, and translation. AI requires a lot of data to build good models. If we use data from multiple cities, we can build more successful models faster. For example, if the City of San José is trying to find a better way to detect obstructions in a bike lane, we can get a better solution by combining our data with data from other cities.
There’s been truly something magical about government agencies coming together to tackle an emerging opportunity. I am excited to see how we can build on this momentum. ✹
The GovAI Coalition welcomes public agencies, members of the public, academic institutions, and companies to join. Find out more and download templates and materials at https://sanjoseca.gov/govai.