Local governments face pressure to deliver services efficiently, equitably, and transparently amid limited resources. The City of Rancho Cordova is meeting this challenge by applying AI and data analytics to improve operations and decision-making.

Using computer vision and machine learning, the City is building a data-driven approach to spot issues in neighborhoods before they escalate—enabling proactive, equitable service delivery across functions like code enforcement, public works, and infrastructure maintenance.

This session highlights how Technology and Code Enforcement partnered to evaluate and implement AI solutions aligned with City priorities. Presenters will share lessons on governance, organizational readiness, and compliance with security, privacy, and ethical AI standards, offering a practical playbook for responsible, data-driven service delivery.

Ever wonder how to get city departments to agree on priorities—or even the same meeting time? Our Business Relationship Management team cracked the code, bringing IT, project managers, and department heads into real collaboration (without anyone running for the exit). Discover how the BRM team led structured brainstorming, brokered smart compromises, and transformed scattered ideas into a unified technology portfolio and roadmap. Leave with practical strategies—and maybe a good story or two—for turning cross-department chaos into a citywide game plan everyone stands behind.

Being a CIO in government can be a challenge, especially when it comes to business value demonstration, stakeholder engagement, and collaborative efforts with business teams that don’t understand how IT achievements enable public service excellence. This session will help technology leaders understand why they need to be great storytellers and share some real-world examples of how creative storytelling and celebrating your IT success stories increases organizational engagement and improves leadership buy-in and strategic alignment.

Leadership is an inside game. If you don’t understand how you lead yourself, you’re going to
have a difficult time learning to understand and effectively lead others. If you want to learn how
to use a computer effectively, you need to understand its operating system. This information
lies at the heart of understanding the human operating system.
In “The Neuroscience of Leadership,” we look at the underlying drivers of behavior and
motivation and their impact. When we understand how our thoughts, beliefs, and emotions can
influence our actions, we can learn to be more intentional and create the type of outcomes we
want, rather than spending time cleaning up the ones we didn’t.
Takeaways: Participants will learn more about their intrinsic motivators as well as understand
how those impact their thoughts, beliefs, emotions, and actions. Having this information is like
having the key to unlock the human operating system

A deep dive into three pivotal scientific studies to help attendees understand why social engineering is a “human problem” not a “stupid human problem”. Learn how to understand, mitigate, and defend against social engineering using science.

As AI continues to transform how organizations operate, establishing a strong foundation for governance, privacy, and security is critical—especially in the public sector. In this session, learn how one organization is pioneering an AI/Privacy Platform as a Service (PaaS) to centralize digital foundations, streamline AI governance, and elevate enterprise-wide management without adding staff.

Discover how collaboration with vendors and local municipalities has accelerated knowledge building, policy creation, and risk management. From AI model oversight to public engagement, cybersecurity, audits, and feedback loops, this session will showcase how a strategic, scalable approach can safeguard public trust while maximizing efficiency. Attendees will also gain insights into assessing organizational investment and resource planning to sustain an enterprise AI program well into the future.

Join us to explore a roadmap for responsible, sustainable, and scalable AI governance in local government—and leave with actionable strategies you can bring to your own organization.

This session covers why OSINT is important for every CISO with examples of ciso's Chris has worked with who were compromised by their families and how to protect them and to be aware.

Traditional procurement processes often require extensive consultant involvement, highly detailed RFPs, and significant client effort to define technical solutions, frequently without improving project outcomes. This paper presents a simplified procurement approach that reduces complexity by leveraging contractor expertise, minimizing prescriptive RFP requirements, and shifting solution development away from the client. By focusing on clear objectives and performance metrics rather than exhaustive technical detail, the process allows contractors—who are best positioned to understand and solve complex problems—to propose optimal solutions. A case study of a public agency procuring a new wastewater treatment plant demonstrates how these simplifications reduced procurement effort, shortened timelines, and maintained accountability while achieving desired results. The paper also identifies client-side activities that consumed time and resources but did not affect contractor selection or final performance, illustrating how simplified, expertise-driven procurement can improve efficiency without increasing risk.

Public agencies are moving from basic Generative AI tasks—answering questions and summarizing documents—to purpose-built agents that support real work. This session offers a practical, vendor-neutral roadmap for making that shift. We’ll clarify what “agents” mean in a government context and why they matter for speed, quality, and consistency.

Focusing on fundamentals rather than tools, we’ll cover purpose and scope, governance and risk guardrails, privacy and security, responsible data use, and human-in-the-loop practices. We’ll also touch on use-case prioritization and change management so pilots can scale sustainably. Throughout, we’ll share real examples that illustrate key decisions and tradeoffs, and we’ll present our roadmap showing how we advanced from isolated prompts to accountable agents. Participants will leave with a clear understanding of the principles and process to evolve city operations while maintaining public trust.

As artificial intelligence becomes more embedded in local government operations, data governance has never been more critical—or more complex. In this session, Adam Kellner, Director of Information Technology for the City of North Las Vegas, and Bratton Riley, CEO of Citibot, will explore how cities can harness AI responsibly to ensure the integrity, accessibility, and ownership of their data.

Through the lens of North Las Vegas’s implementation, attendees will learn how AI-powered tools can support cross-departmental data coordination, improve internal workflows, and promote public trust. This conversation will offer practical insights for any municipality seeking to modernize their data governance strategies while remaining transparent, ethical, and resident-focused.

Learn from Salt Lake City's creation of a city-wide comprehensive privacy program. This session will include a sharing of resources for privacy training, policies, contract provisions, privacy impact assessments (PIAs), and more.

Why do so many government projects struggle despite having talented teams, competent vendors, and clear intentions? After 5years of active research into project delivery over the last 60years, a consistent conclusion emerges: projects succeed or fail based on the environment they are delivered in, not the effort of the people doing the work.

This session introduces 6 structural patterns repeatedly observed across well-documented public-sector failures. Though the sectors differ, the underlying characteristics remain the same: fragmented accountability, unclear ownership, procurement-driven distortion, unstable information environments, expertise suppression, and decision structures that make success accidental rather than repeatable. Each pattern is translated into plain operational language and paired with a simple diagnostic question leaders can apply before kickoff to assess whether their environment is “structured to succeed” or “structured to fail.” The emphasis is not on adding more process, committees, or documentation; instead, this session presents practical environmental adjustments that stabilize project delivery without increasing bureaucracy.

Attendees will leave with a lightweight, research-based diagnostic tool derived directly from the dissertation work. The model is designed for CIOs, PMOs, and public-sector teams seeking a clearer way to identify structural risks early, strengthen delivery environments, and increase the probability of success across IT, innovation, and cross-department initiatives.

Formats
Solution-focused session
Implementation and lessons learned

Target audience
CIOs, IT leaders, enterprise architects, cybersecurity leads, product owners.

Abstract
Agentic systems promise assistants that can sense, plan, and act... but what actually works in government? This session distills a practical playbook: start with Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) and single-agent patterns to ground answers; only scale to multi-agent orchestration when requirements demand distinct skills, parallelization, or independent verification.

We’ll cover a minimal architecture (LLM + retrieval + actions + memory), decision gates for right-sizing complexity, and guardrails like routing, validation, logging, and human-in-the-loop to keep systems safe and auditable. You’ll leave with templates and a one-page rollout plan to go from pilot to production, plus concrete metrics (accuracy, deflection, SLA hit-rate, ROI%) to prove value to leadership.

This will be based on the playbooks I've built for the GovAI Coalition and can provide attendees with checklists, test plans, and governance patterns they can adopt.

This paper describes how a city organization transformed its procurement function by implementing a more structured, performance-based approach to project delivery. Central to this transformation was the introduction of a tracking system, a management tool used to track project success, procurement timelines, and risk—capabilities that did not previously exist within the organization. By simplifying RFP requirements and shifting focus from excessive documentation to measurable outcomes, the city achieved an estimated 50% reduction in procurement time and effort compared to its prior process. Analysis of the new data revealed that the primary bottlenecks were concentrated in the legal review and administrative components of RFP development rather than in technical evaluation. Using these insights, the organization established targeted safeguards to ensure procurements were compliant, transparent, and easily defensible while avoiding unnecessary complexity. The case study demonstrates how structured performance tracking and process simplification can significantly improve procurement efficiency without increasing risk or reducing accountability.

This will be a panel discussion consisting of a Facilitator and 3 City Managers as panelists. This session is designed to help IT Managers, Directors, and CIOs understand the “Dos and Don’ts” when presenting to their Executive Management Team, City Council, Official Committees, Board of Supervisors, or Board of Directors. Attending this session should have the individual leaving with at least 1 new tip/trick for putting together and delivering an effective presentation and an understanding of best practices to achieve the desired result (i.e., item is approved to proceed to the next logical step). Presentation style will be discussed (styles to embrace and styles to avoid) as well as type and level of content within the presentation (minute details vs. information appropriate for the audience).

Come join us at the Conversation Café! Our goal in this session is for you to build connections with your peers in other municipalities / agencies that you can reference in the future. This session will be a “speed dating” format. Each table have 5 minutes to talk about what their agency is doing on a defined topic. Each agency has about a minute to provide this description. At the end of 5 minutes, you will change tables and the next topic will be announced. If you want to dive deeper into a conversation, please find your new friend at one of the many social opportunities during the conference!
Topic include:
Smart City Technologies: Exploring the implementation of IoT, AI, and other smart technologies to improve urban infrastructure and services.
Cybersecurity: Discussing strategies to protect municipal data and infrastructure from cyber threats and ensuring the privacy of citizens.
Data Management and Analytics: Utilizing big data to make informed decisions, enhance city planning, and improve public services.
Cloud Computing: Leveraging cloud solutions to increase efficiency, scalability, and cost-effectiveness of municipal services. SaaS PaaS
Digital Identity Solutions: Developing secure and user-friendly digital identity systems to facilitate access to municipal services and enhance citizen trust.

This session explores the journey of implementing a modern data platform to handle large-scale utility data, particularly from Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI). The presentation covers the transition from an on-premises SQL Server environment to a Azure Databricks solution that effectively manages millions of daily meter readings while providing self-service capabilities for data analysts.
Attendees will learn about:
• The business drivers behind the platform migration, including the need to handle millions of daily meter readings from 230,000 smart meters - and store billions of readings over the coming years.
• The evaluation process that led to selecting Databricks over alternatives
• Implementation timeline and architecture decisions
• Real-world applications built on the platform, including water leak detection, SCADA integration, and performance metrics forecasting
• Pros and Cons

This paper presents a case study demonstrating recent advancements in the Best Value Approach and their impact on improving procurement efficiency, clarity, and performance. Building on lessons learned from earlier implementations, the refined process reduces unnecessary steps, increases transparency, and further emphasizes expert-led decision making. The case study examines the procurement of an advanced mobility technology project using the updated approach and compares actual outcomes to expected results. While the client introduced deviations by not fully adhering to the process, the final procurement outcomes remained consistent with Best Value predictions, indicating the robustness of the methodology. The findings show that the improved process delivered measurable benefits despite partial noncompliance, reinforcing that Best Value principles—when properly structured—can withstand deviations while still producing predictable and successful procurement results.

Government agencies often assume governance will improve once the right policies are written. Tucson’s experience suggests a different reality. As the city advanced its technology and AI governance efforts, the core challenge was not missing documentation but the absence of a shared mental model for how governance should function in daily work. This surfaced a workforce learning need: without common understanding, staff interpreted risk, authority, and escalation inconsistently, even when guidance existed. Tucson addressed this by integrating education directly into the governance build. Cross functional training sessions created space for staff to examine real decision patterns, identify misalignments, and develop shared language across departments. These learning environments revealed where responsibilities were unclear, where risk interpretations diverged, and where existing practices created friction. Insights from this work continue to inform the city’s developing data and technology governance structures and shape how roles, expectations, and decision pathways are defined. Although the work is ongoing, an emerging lesson for public sector training is clear. Governance capability must be taught and reinforced during policy development, not after. Early results show greater alignment in how teams handle ambiguity, coordinate across boundaries, and understand when escalation is required. Tucson’s experience offers a practical model for governments seeking to build governance structures and workforce competence at the same time.

CJIS compliance isn’t just an IT issue—it’s a team effort between technology, legal, and law enforcement. With the release of CJIS Security Policy 6.0, agencies face new challenges in managing data protection, access control, and vendor oversight in addition to all the previous requirements. This panel will focus on how IT teams can take the lead in meeting these updated requirements while coordinating with legal and police departments to ensure policies and practices align. Panelists will discuss real examples of implementing CJIS controls, using compensating controls when full compliance isn’t possible, and translating technical safeguards into clear operational and legal processes. Attendees will leave with practical steps and lessons learned for building CJIS compliance that works in the real world.

Using data, standards and a strategic plan to move your IT business model forward, while meeting the business value and satisfaction.

When IT professionals have genuine working relationships, they're more likely to over-communicate, share knowledge across silos, and actually follow through on commitments to each other. This directly impacts project delivery. Project Manager's Tessa and Christine will demonstrate how their friendships with each other and other technical team members created synergy in successfully managing complex multi-departmental projects where vendor coordination and cross-team alignment were critical.

Using emerging technology, the city achieved urban planning innovation utilizing the City of Chandler’s Digital Twin, enabling the city to transform static blueprints into dynamic, data-driven ecosystems. Integrating 3D modeling with real-time data, geospatial analytics, planners were able to visualize and simulate urban environments with unprecedented clarity. Also, project stakeholders and community members directly benefited from digital twin technology enabling them to create, enhance and visualize an alternative future.

This project also introduced an Immersive Experience Lab, powered by augmented reality (AR). The project utilized Augmented Reality technology overlays with digital models blending real-world and concept environments together enabling stakeholders to visualize the future directly at the site of interest. Use of these emerging technology tools fosters a deeper level of engagement and understanding among residents, architects, and city officials.

Both the process and technological innovations described above have empowered Chandler staff and community members to make informed, sustainable decisions, fostering resilience and enhancing the quality of urban life!

The City of Chandler works to promote proactive citizen engagement through digital services. Focused on using technology for good and elevating the city to be a more inclusive and equitable city to live, work and thrive. Chandler and Chandler Municipal Courts adopted a real-time Instant Language Assistant (ILA) to elevate inclusive resident communication (through multiple languages) and remove language barriers through the city and improve overall customer service.

In October 2025, The Arizona Supreme Court recognized Chandler Municipal Court as a recipient of the Strategic Agenda Award for Advancement in Technology, honoring the court’s innovative Instant Language Assistant program.

In 2025, Chandler’s ERP transformation demonstrated how shifting mindsets—not just systems—can modernize municipal operations. By embracing change, collaborating and innovating across departments, and prioritizing people, the city not only replaced legacy software but redefined how public services are delivered. This mindset-driven approach offers a powerful blueprint for other cities aiming to innovate.
During this time the city has embraced four (4) core elements of a transformative mindset including:
1. Seeing change as opportunity led by city leadership nurturing a culture that welcomes innovation-understanding the shortcomings of legacy systems and embracing new technologies.
2. Inclusive stakeholder engagement by launching “Voice of the Employee” sessions and incorporating input from across departments, Chandler fostered user-centered design, ensuring the ERP meets the real needs of our diverse workforce.
3. Outcome-driven decision making via Chandlers’ ERP strategy assessed current structures, guided governance improvements, and measured transformation success through tangible benefits, not just system deployment.
4. Breaking down silos through communication fostering cross-departmental collaboration became critical in aligning all teams behind a shared vision—and making the ERP rollout a truly enterprise-wide transformation.

This Mindset Transformation initiative also introduced four (4) key strategies to achieve a successful Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) transformation including:
1) Education and training which incorporated comprehensive skill-building, knowledge-sharing, and role profiling equipped staff for new responsibilities and fostered understanding of ERP benefits; 2) Leadership by example city leaders visibly championed the change—communicating the vision, modeling new behaviors, and committing to continuous improvement; 3) Celebrating early wins by marking milestones and achievements helped sustain momentum and built enthusiasm organization-wide; and 4) introducing Continuous feedback loops which encouraged iterative employee input, created room for refinement, strengthened buy-in, and cultivated a lasting culture of improvement.

An interactive keynote on building values-driven collaboration across agencies and states. Berké blends story and behavioral science to show how culture, language, and everyday actions can unlock trust, accelerate shared problem-solving, and spread what works. Designed for practical application—leaders leave with ideas to strengthen collaboration back on the job.