Utah

Salt Lake City and Minneapolis are saving yearly staff hours and simplifying processes with an artificial intelligence-powered cloud-based work management tool. It’s helping reshape two familiar areas of municipal need.

NVIDIA is lending teaching materials and upskilling opportunities in artificial intelligence to Utah's higher education students and state workers in a new partnership with colleges and universities across the state.

From working to improve the citizen experience to advancing artificial intelligence and cybersecurity, Utah’s tech leader is focused on the value of investing in the “human capital” of the state workforce.

The Office of Artificial Intelligence Policy at the Utah Department of Commerce has opened roughly four months after its creation. It will explore the most effective methods of AI regulation and guide development of responsible policies.

The Utah Department of Transportation will continue its partnership with Panasonic on deploying connected vehicle technology. It intends to add more vehicles to the project and make collected data actionable.

In Arkansas, Florida, Georgia and Utah, lawmakers this session are trying to balance digital privacy and children’s mental health issues as they seek to implement social media mandates.

Building an AI program is a daunting proposition, but government has to start somewhere. From strengthening cybersecurity to improving 311, a handful of early adopters are finding safe and practical uses.

Amendments to the Utah Social Media Regulation Act would allow lawsuits if it can be proven that “addictive social media algorithms” contributed to the worsening of a child’s mental health. Related laws have been stopped in two other states.

As Georgia introduces new legislation to address cyberbullying and regulate teenage social media use, other states with comparative laws are facing staunch legal challenges related to privacy.

The Utah State Board of Education recently approved plans that would allow schools to make use of AI gun detection technology from the video analytics platform ZeroEyes. The technology is able to identify firearms in real time.

According to the Federal Highway Administration, the grant funding, allocated under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, aims to propel digital construction tools such as computer modeling and 3D design in 10 state DOTs.

Remote hearings, adopted as a pandemic necessity, could become common going forward in some states. Minnesota and Arizona have created guides indicating which hearings are suited for remote and which should be in person.

Utah CTO David Fletcher will be retiring this week after over two decades in the role. In his final days in public service, he shared what he has learned and accomplished in a career peppered with technological disruption.

For state and local government agencies across the U.S., GIS technology has the power to inform decision-making, impact funding and improve the constituent experience through various applications.

Using federal funds intended to help schools reopen safely after COVID-19, Utah has put energy-efficient air purifiers in 60 percent of its schools and 55 percent of its state-certified day care centers since last fall.

New members of the Utah Board of Higher Education will include executives from biotech, financial tech and tech workforce development sectors, as well as board members of several technical institutions.

More state, local and educational entities should follow cybersecurity frameworks and ensure all staff participate in regular cybersecurity awareness training, the performance audit advised. Plus, the state legislative branch needs to develop both short-term and long-term cyber plans.

At the NASCIO Midyear conference, Utah CIO Alan Fuller outlined modernization plans and cloud migrations for major systems like health and human services and HR to lower operating costs statewide.