Several Iowa municipalities are crafting new guidelines about how civic employees should — and shouldn’t — use artificial intelligence. Johnson County I-T director Bill Horning says these types of policies are important for protecting sensitive information, and his county’s employees may soon have to report if and how they use A-I.
For example, if a county worker asks Chat-G-P-T to smooth out an email they’ve just written, any information in that email is now part of Chat-G-P-T. Horning says employees need to be trained on when to use A-I and what to do afterwards.
Black Hawk, Pottawattamie, Sioux and Woodbury are some other counties that have created their own guidelines, while Iowa state employees also have to follow an A-I policy. Horning says the guidelines are necessary, especially as A-I gets more embedded in common software, like Microsoft’s Copilot and Googe’s Gemini.
