New Castle County pilots Microsoft M365 Copilot, council urged cautious rollout

At a Technology Subcommittee meeting of the New Castle County Council, Co-Chair Dave Carter and John Yearley, acting chief of technology and administrative services, described a limited county pilot of Microsoft M365 Copilot and a near-final AI use policy.

The matter matters to county operations because staff and council members said the tools could speed routine work but pose data-security, bias and training risks that require guardrails. Carter said generative artificial intelligence "has to be checked and checked well." Yearley said the county has "purchased licenses for a model called Microsoft m 3 65 Copilot" and has onboarded roughly "about 10 to 15 users already with Copilot."

Yearley told the subcommittee the county chose the M365 Copilot platform because it is contained inside the county's Microsoft tenant and, he said, "it uses a model that doesn't train other models out there in the real world" and therefore will not export county data. He said the platform has helped him with email and task management during testing, but cautioned that generative AI produces varying answers and must be validated. "I've put in a search in chat g p t. I've put in a search in Grok. I put in a search in Apple Intelligence, and I get 3 different values, 3 different answers," Yearley said.

Council members raised budget and training concerns. Councilmember Kevin Kaneko asked whether the initiative is an official pilot; Yearley replied, "I would say it is an official pilot program." Kaneko asked how long the pilot would last and for a cost projection. Yearley and Co-Chair Carter described adoption uncertainty and said use, and therefore costs, depend on who finds the tool valuable. Yearley gave the current license cost as about "$30 per user per month." He also said county-wide Microsoft expenditures in March were "almost $600,000," and that broader deployment could increase that total depending on uptake.

The subcommittee heard that legal review and a formal county AI policy are nearly complete. Yearley said he planned to "pass [the policy] off to law to get their eyes and ears on it, get a final review." Members asked for training tied to the pilot; Yearley said the county is building training and may reuse lessons from other counties and NACO (the National Association of Counties).

No formal broad deployment decision was made at the meeting. The committee recorded that a small group of early users from IT and procurement are testing the product; the county is keeping the pilot deliberately limited while finalizing policy, training and legal review. Staff said next steps include completing the legal review, rolling out training tied to the pilot, and returning to the council with timeline and budget projections.

The subcommittee briefly discussed disclosure and ethics. Carter said organizations using AI typically note AI assistance in published material and that the county's policy will require users to cite sources and disclose AI assistance when appropriate. "There's an ethical use. Part of that is, yes, is is not plagiarizing. And part of our policy is saying you have to state where you've got this information from," Yearley said.

Members who asked questions or spoke about the pilot included the subcommittee chair and several council members; no final vote adopting countywide M365 Copilot licenses or a policy occurred during the meeting.