As artificial intelligence (AI) becomes more prominent, the Lewis County Board of Commissioners took steps on Tuesday to establish its own policies on AI use for county business.
The Lewis County Board of Commissioners approved a resolution establishing a county policy on AI use by local government employees. The policy includes prohibiting certain high-risk uses of AI.
For example, the policy will prohibit county officials from providing non-public county documents to commercial AI platforms that employees may be using to expedite work, according to Lewis County IT Director Gabe Anzelini, who introduced the resolution to the commissioners.
According to the county IT director, the county policy provides a foundation to help county staff and administrators judge which uses are appropriate for AI.
“Essentially, AI is out there. People are using it, and we want to put some guardrails on it,” Anzelini said. “We think it’s a valuable tool for people to use, but they need to be made aware of potential dangers, especially where public disclosure and privacy is concerned.”
The document published by the county that will now dictate which uses of AI are allowed has some strict prohibitions. Firstly, it requires that all proposed uses of AI by county employees be first approved by county department heads or elected county officials, as well as be reviewed and approved by the Lewis County IT department.
It does not allow submitting confidential documents into a commercial AI tool. It also prohibits using AI to impersonate individuals, automate important decisions or for biometric identification or tracking individuals without legal authority.
It also establishes certain values that should be upheld by any AI use titled “Guiding Principles.” These include human oversight, accountability, security, privacy, safety, transparency, effectiveness and more.
In terms of privacy, the policy also appears to make the county's stance on how AI will be treated in the case of public records disclosures. The policy advises county employees to treat AI prompts as documents that can be requested by the public.
During the hearing, Commissioner Scott Brummer asked if the document would change or be considered a “living document” to adapt to changes or developments in technology. Anzelini added that the document is structured in a way so that county IT personnel can publish varied and updated guidance on AI systems without needing to update the overall policy.
“It's written in such a way that IT will write up analyses of different systems so that it doesn't have to be formally done in policy every single time,” Anzelini said. “We can just provide our guidance, and then it just kind of leans on the policy to provide the teeth behind it.”
