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Bonner County staff to schedule dedicated meeting on AI policy and IT migration after assessor issues AI rules
Summary
The county’s assessor has issued two AI policies for assessor staff, and county IT urged an electeds-and-directors meeting to discuss in-house vs. commercial AI tools and an upcoming Microsoft migration. Commissioners asked staff to schedule the session.
Dennis Engelhard, assessor of Bonner County, told commissioners he has issued two policies governing assessor staff use of AI tools and is coordinating their review with the county’s legal, IT, HR and risk teams. He said he plans a press release and will share the policy documents with fellow commissioners.
County IT staff outlined broader questions about how the county should manage AI use and whether to adopt an internal hosted solution or rely on commercial services such as ChatGPT. An IT speaker noted trade-offs between local control and performance: hosted, county-managed AI can be audited, while commercial web interfaces can be harder to track for the handling of confidential data.
Why it matters: county departments use AI for drafting and editing communications and could use it in operational workflows. Without centralized policy or managed access, staff-entered confidential or personally identifiable information (PII) could be exposed through public web AI tools, the IT speaker warned. “If we're gonna be using it, we would rather have a little more control over it as opposed to just opening up your browser and just type in whatever you want into chat GPT,” the IT speaker said.
Commissioners asked staff to arrange a dedicated meeting with elected officials and department heads to present options, costs and a statement of work for a proposed Microsoft migration and possible county-managed AI. The IT speaker said the county has completed a cost analysis for a Microsoft migration and has a vendor ready to discuss scope and timing.
No formal policy for a county-wide AI deployment was adopted at the meeting. Commissioners directed staff to schedule the focused discussion so elected officials, department heads and relevant staff can make a policy decision with detailed cost and operational information.
The assessor’s AI policies will be circulated to the commissioners and relevant departments for review in the coming days.
