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City staff outlines AI strategy and use cases; planning review identified as priority
Summary
City staff briefed council on an AI strategy exercise and department use cases, including customer-response automation, plan-review opportunities for the Planning Department and an inventory of existing AI systems; staff also said policies and information-security guardrails are under development.
City staff summarized early work on an artificial intelligence strategy and department-level use cases, and said staff will pursue pilot applications and policy guardrails to manage data and security risks.
Sarah Stubblefield told the council that an AI strategy exercise completed in January produced use cases submitted by multiple departments. Planning staff participated and identified customer-response scenarios such as permit status and routine planning questions as an initial focus. “We did go through an AI strategy process where we developed some use cases, earlier in January, and our planning department did participate with us in that,” Stubblefield said.
Councilmember Peel asked specifically for research on AI tools to assist planning plan-review workflows; staff said plan-review was among the use cases and that the city is in a permitting system transition (Amanda replacement) where AI could enhance permit-review throughput. Stubblefield said staff will gather vendor examples and follow up with an email update.
Councilmembers also discussed governance and data protection. Councilmember Trog emphasized the need for policies and data controls and pointed to the University of Texas system’s policy work as a model. Stubblefield said the city is creating an AI inventory of existing tools and developing guardrails with the information-security officer. She also noted some departments that do not use general-fund resources may be candidates for earlier pilot deployments.
Staff gave examples of existing AI use in city departments, including legal research applications for reviewing state legislation. A goal to upskill staff — training employees to use tools responsibly — was highlighted as a near-term, lower-cost priority.
Ending: Staff will research specific planning-focused AI vendors, compile an AI inventory, continue to develop policies with information-security staff and provide councilmembers with targeted updates, including an email brief on planning-review possibilities.
