State, county and education leaders urge standards, say privacy must be balanced with transparency

State and local officials, archivists and private-sector technologists on Friday urged more statewide standards and clearer definitions so smaller jurisdictions can meet Utah's new privacy obligations while preserving transparency.

Utah County Commissioner Amelia Powers Gardner said automation and standardized templates help agencies work more efficiently, but added that privacy is a "moral imperative." "I am a strong advocate for privacy. I do not believe that the government should control our lives," she said, adding that government should "serve the people" while protecting individual sovereignty.

Ken Williams, Utah State Archivist and director of the Utah State Archives and Records Service, called the collaboration at the summit encouraging and urged officials to catalog records and engage records managers as tools and policies are developed. "The only way that this will succeed is if it's a collaborative effort," Williams said.

Panelists listed frequent practical obstacles: inconsistent definitions (for example, whether particular digital files constitute a "record"), outdated or overly broad record-series categories that do not match modern use cases, and the absence of statewide enterprise standards that small jurisdictions could apply. A specific example raised by a panelist was that the Government Data Privacy Act's required public notice must include a record series for the collection; panelists said finding an appropriate record-series match for routine actions such as a training sign-up can be difficult under the current catalog.

Dr. Jonas (Oracle Cloud Financial Services Industry) and other technologists on the panel argued that enterprise platforms, applied AI and prepopulated templates could reduce repetitive work and let local officials customize only what matters. "If you can take away 80% of the repetitive work... the system can do it for you," said an Oracle representative speaking about templated, AI-assisted approaches.

The panel also raised the tension between privacy and transparency. One panelist described a Utah example in which citizen activism produced a law to protect voter-registration privacy; that same protection has been criticized later as reducing transparency. "We had privacy, and the privacy law was passed ... and it has now caused significant transparency issues," the panelist said, urging an agile approach that can adjust as technologies and expectations evolve.

Several speakers emphasized practical steps: clearer statewide guidance (boilerplate templates and standards that are not regulatory rules), improved cataloging of what data agencies hold, and the need to treat compliance as a spectrum rather than a binary. Panelists also flagged resource constraints for small entities and said standardization could relieve burdens on counties, cities, special service districts and school districts that lack in-house expertise.

The panel closed by urging continued collaboration among state archivists, the Utah Department of Data Privacy, local officials, universities and vendors, and by calling for funding to support implementation. A number of panelists thanked UVU students and faculty for the GovSense demo as an example of how academic partnerships can produce practical tools.