Maryland Governor Wes Moore announced a new partnership with Anthropic on Thursday. The move will give state employees access to technology powered by the company’s generative artificial intelligence chatbot, Claude, with the goal of accelerating state services, reducing child poverty and improving housing access.
According to a news release, some agency teams will use Claude-powered virtual assistants to deliver benefits faster and streamline housing permits. The tool will help residents apply for benefits, update information and track their claims, as well as identify additional programs they may be eligible for, the state said in a statement.
Implementation of Maryland’s new partnership will be supported by Percepta, a company that helps organizations transform their business processes. The state will also receive support from the Rockefeller Foundation.
Percepta’s engineering and technical staff will help accelerate progress on the state’s AI initiatives, improve permitting timelines, and support Maryland’s efforts to expand housing development. Since July, Percepta has been working with the Maryland Department of the Environment and the Maryland Office of Digital Services and AI Enablement within the Maryland Department of Information Technology to develop a self-service portal for environmental site assessments. The new platform will accelerate the development and financing of construction projects across the state, according to the state.
Initially, the new initiative will be extended to employees at the Maryland Department of Human Services, the Department of Labor, the Governor’s Innovation Team, and the Maryland Department of the Environment. The state said it hopes the initiative will demonstrate a “unified commitment to responsibly embed AI across state government.”
The announcement is the Moore administration’s latest effort this year to improve service delivery through investments in technology and modernization. In January, Moore signed an executive order to accelerate modernization efforts across the state, directing agencies to examine data to reduce operating costs, streamline operations and eliminate redundancies to better serve taxpayers. Maryland Chief Information Officer Katie Savage said in May that the state’s Office of Technology is “looking at everything” in identifying ways to increase efficiency.
In June, the state unveiled a new bilingual AI chatbot built on Anthropic’s Claude Sonnet model to expand customer access to benefit programs and reduce call volume. In August, Moore launched six new pilot programs to improve the permitting process for infrastructure projects, with the goal of making the state more efficient and productive.
“Artificial intelligence can be a powerful tool for change, and now we are harnessing that power through groundbreaking partnerships with Anthropic and Percepta,” Moore said in a press release. “From day one, we were clear that it wasn’t enough to rebuild someone else’s broken government; we needed to innovate. By leveraging AI, we will accelerate our efforts to fight poverty and turn renters into homeowners, and ensure all Marylanders have faster and more effective access to essential services like nutrition and financial assistance.”
