Louisville initiates AI overhaul, seeks AI proposals to improve government services

Artificial intelligence (AI) advancement and innovation is taking an increasingly leading role in municipal operations across the country. The city of Louisville, Kentucky, is the latest to take the next step in AI integration by expanding its AI leadership team and pursuing new pilot programs.

After expanding its IT agency’s operating budget by $2 million, Louisville has begun instrumenting new ways to use AI technologies to enhance the government’s efficiency and efficacy. On June 25, IT officials released a Request for Proposals (RFP) soliciting concepts for pilot-ready, short-term AI pilot programs to address real-world issues.

Pilot programs sponsored by the city will design and implement AI, machine learning, robotic processing automation, computer vision, natural language processing, generative AI or other emerging technologies to enhance municipal operations. The city included a series of problems these programs should address, including:

• Infrastructure assessments.
• Preemptive and post emergency detection.
• In-vehicle audio/video monitoring across city fleet.
• Improved accessibility to civic and public departmental knowledge.
• Enhanced 311 access.
• Building plan review automation.
• Permitting and zoning automation.
• Internal human resources automation and intelligence.
• Multilevel data integration and automation.
• AI-assisted redaction for open records.
• AI assistant tools for increasing employee productivity and efficiency.

As part of the RFP’s first phase, the city will select between five and 10 pilots to be conducted over a three-to-six-month period. Metro Technology Services (MTS) will then evaluate the program’s impact and determine further allocations for technology rollout. Results from the pilots are expected to be ready to share by fiscal 2027.

Louisville will also expand its AI workforce to better support this work. Similar to other cities across the nation, MTS plans to hire a chief AI officer by the end of September to spearhead AI initiatives and oversee pilot program operations. The city will also build out a four-person AI team to provide support.

Image by Kohji Asakawa from Pixabay