McHenry County explores AI to speed deeds, court filings, evidence review and customer service

McHenry County Administrative Services Committee members heard on Sept. 3 from county staff and vendors about exploratory artificial‑intelligence tools to speed property-record processing, e‑filing and document extraction for courts, automated transcription and summarization of evidence, procurement automation and a potential public-facing chatbot.

The discussion, led by Alicia Schuler, director of public affairs, and Adam O'Connor, director of procurement and special services, focused on pilot results and safeguards. "No PII in the AI. There's one thing that you take away from this presentation, no PII in the AI," Schuler said, summarizing a county policy the board previously adopted. She said the policy requires staff to "always check the AI's work" and to use only IT‑approved tools.

Why it matters: County staff described performance gains and estimated costs but did not request procurement approvals at the meeting. Committee members were asked to consider future budget and policy decisions as projects move from pilots to production.

What staff described - Assessments: Alex Benitez, assessments, described a new vendor contract that uses software to read deeds, extract legal descriptions and populate mapping fields. Benitez said the project cut processing lead time from about six weeks…