He can’t pick just one.
When Ryan Rose, Chief Information Officer for the Weld County Department of Information Technology (IT), thinks about the impactful moments in the evolution of technology over the last three decades, he argues with himself about the most significant. He can’t hide a smile, though, when thinking how excited he was and still is to be a part of it while working for the University of Northern Colorado for almost 20 years and with Weld County for the past 11.
He throws out words like DOS — the disc-operating system known as one of the first of its kind for personal computers — and tries to explain the significance of successfully sending research information to Colorado State University or the University of New Mexico, all in a time when the internet didn’t fully exist and computer use was confined to large terminals.
Mention a term like artificial intelligence (AI), the latest advancement in technology that’s become mainstream since 2023 with the rise of ChatGPT, and Rose’s excitement reaches a new level — in part for AI’s technological significance but more for what it could mean for Weld County Government and residents moving forward.
“With AI, routine tasks can become simpler and more efficient, if that’s writing a memo to staff, completing a pivot table or analyzing a large data set. Things that maybe took 20 minutes can be done in a fraction of the time,” Rose said, mentioning potential cost savings to taxpayers associated with AI. “It could mean time saved and greater productivity.”
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Official county-approved AI technology, made available to employees in late June, came after more than a year’s worth of meetings with county department supervisors to determine how AI was being or could be used to better serve residents. From these AI Roundtable discussions, an AI policy was developed, which outlines guidelines for its use. Even though AI will assist departments in different ways, it’s meant to assist employees in their jobs, not be a replacement for human interaction, judgment or expertise.
That leads to a few questions. If AI is not meant to replace the human effect, is it really needed at all? Why is its use inevitable in Weld County Government? The answers are simple. AI is already intertwined in daily life. Many interactions with smartphones and smart speakers — think “Hey Siri” or “OK, Google” — are AI prompts. Common internet searches often begin with AI results, something that’s already having an impact on research. According to a report by search engine optimization company Bright Edge, click-through rates on Google Searches are down 30% over the last year, meaning people are accepting AI search results and spending less time clicking links to find the answer on their own.
This suggests, as Rose pointed out, people are already using AI, its use will grow over time, and the county needed a way to govern its use and put in safeguards with regard to privacy and sensitivity of personal information, just like it has with the rest of the county’s technological framework.
“Just as many people want to use new technology in their personal lives, we shouldn’t be behind the times in our professional lives. At the same time, we wanted our employees to use a safe, secure tool,” Rose said.
That safe, secure tool is a government branch of Microsoft’s Co-Pilot software suite, which features data privacy policies around publicly identifiable information, is compliant with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, criminal justice information systems requirements, payment processing requirements and more.
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An added benefit to the county’s AI system is that the technology it uses stretches beyond the internet and can search within the Weld County Government Cloud, meaning information could actually come from documents saved on an employee’s Microsoft OneDrive account or email, providing a new way to present original information.
Equally as exciting is the use of AI beyond the generative version — the kind that writes notes, puts together data, etc. — there is also agentic AI. This type of AI can not only generate information but respond to it, an ability Rose believes can be a big asset in the to the county’s cybersecurity efforts.
“A lot of the security vendors are baking AI into (software). This AI is pattern based. It will learn the network and behaviors,” Rose said. It will detect anomalies and potential threats, react to those and protect against them in real time.
“The internet doesn’t sleep. If I can have an AI assistant on the cybersecurity side that helps us protect county assets and information, I see a huge benefit to that.”
Rose mentioned that benefit, and others that will eventually come with the use of AI, shows the continued commitment of the Weld County Board of Commissioners to provide residents with the best services possible by investing in, or in this case approving, the latest technology.
“The benefits that await employees and residents are the culmination of staff work and the forethought of the commissioners to continually ask, ‘How can we do things better and more efficiently?’, Rose said. “It’s something we’ve seen since IT was moved in house in 2014, and we appreciate having the support when it comes to bettering technology and how residents interact with government.”
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Finding a balance
The excitement of AI comes, at least in part, from the unknown. It’s official launch into Weld County Government is new, and time will tell what noticeable efficiencies it brings.
Within its benefit, there must be a balance between original contributions and technology, said Jennifer Finch, Weld County Public Information Officer.
“It comes down to maintaining trust,” she said. “How can we use AI in a beneficial way while still maintaining trust with what we’ve produced, written and reviewed?”
Finch’s comments speak more to the dissemination of public information, something that has been impacted over the past year with the rise of AI-led news sites.
County news releases have been redistributed by AI-driven news sites with varying accuracy, with headlines rewritten and paraphrased quotes that come very close to distorting the meaning of the original message of the information. This speaks to the importance of human effort in the public information process and maintaining trust with residents.
“At the end of the day, you have to start with original content,” Finch said. “Our team works hard to produce original content and disseminate information through interviewing and fact gathering to establish our site as a source for official county information. There’s tremendous value in that.”
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That’s not to say public information is resistant to AI. In fact, quite the opposite. Months of drafting scripts, and test versions of a County Roots podcast, led to one question: Can AI help with the task?
“I’m convinced an audio version of County Roots may reach a whole new audience of people who don’t have time to read an article,” Finch said. “Catching them on their way to work or on a morning jog may be a great way to expand our reach.”
So, that’s one of the next steps in both County Roots and the county’s use of AI — original County Roots stories will be fed into an AI client to generate a 10 to 13-minute conversation, bringing greater efficiency and timesaving to a process that would otherwise require staff time in script writing, recording and editing.
It’s this utilization of technology to better, strengthen, or debut a new service to residents — like an audio version of County Roots — that Rose is most looking forward to.
“It’s pretty transformational in ways we don’t really know yet,” he said. “We’re on the cutting edge of utilizing it to better serve residents. That’s what I’m most excited about.”
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