The NAPA County Board of Supervisors discussed Tuesday a resolution ensuring the legal and ethical use of artificial intelligence by county employees and contractors.
If approved, this resolution prohibits county employees from logging in to publicly available AI applications using their NAPA County Employee ID, entering confidential employee or customer information into the AI service, or using non-authorized AI services on county devices or networks.
It also requires county employees and contractors to review the output generated by all AI to ensure that they are accurate and relevant, matched to the county's values, policy and ethical standards and comply with copyright laws. According to the resolution, county employees or contractors who violate the policy may be subject to fire and civil and criminal penalties.
After the discussion, the board ultimately asked county staff to bring it back at future meetings for approval.
Napa County Digital Innovation Officer Meg Lagan and the county's interim chief security information officer Greg Bowun presented the policy to the board.
“AI is not going to replace the human element, but responsibly can enhance the services we provide to our community,” says Ragan. “This policy represents more than a set of rules. This is a starting point.”
Bown urged the board to quickly pass policies so that county executives can deal with backlogs of applications for using AI services and software, including project management, calendar scheduling, and reporting tools.
“Policies provide a framework that allows us to work at least some of the requests we currently have, and to approve or reject them,” he said.
I want to see it carefully
Supervisor Belia Ramos argued that the board should look into the policy more closely before it passes.
“I don't think that the lack of a policy at the moment necessarily eliminates doing the right thing and moving forward and sourcing applications that we think are necessary,” she said. “From the beginning of NAPA County, we've been doing that for 175 years without an AI policy.”
Ramos noted that the county's information technology use and security policy has not been revised since April 17, 2001.
“Policies provide a framework that allows us to work at least some of the requests we currently have, and to approve or reject them, as they exist.”
Greg Bown, security information officer for Napa County Interim Supreme Court.
“I think we should consider that information technology usage and security policies (and) also have data policies with AI policies. With the 2001 policy, Chromebooks didn't exist even back then,” she said. “I think we actually have a chance to go deeper rather than pause.”
According to Bown, the County Enforcement Department has drafted a new information technology use and security policy that is ready to go through the approval process.
Supervisor Amber Manfrey argued that the county should maintain strong human surveillance to promote quality of work.
“The human element and the review element seem to always be a necessary component of quality control,” she said. “There's something about human intelligence. I think it's difficult to bottle. Forever.”
