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Fort Worth sets AI governance, recommends Microsoft Copilot for city use
Summary
City auditors and IT staff told the Audit & Finance Committee the city has an AI policy and two oversight committees; IT recommended Microsoft Copilot as the enterprise platform to centralize AI use, citing government-cloud isolation and reduced licensing overhead.
Patrice Randall, the city auditor, told the committee her office’s performance audit found the City of Fort Worth has a published AI policy, active departmental AI use, and committees to govern adoption and risk.
Kevin Gunn, the city’s IT solutions director, expanded on governance and said the city created two review bodies — an AI request review committee (technical assessment) and a governance committee (policy/management review) — to vet projects before they enter the standard IT project portfolio.
"We want to balance the pace of innovation and bring new functionality to the organization with the risk that it poses to us," Gunn said, citing data-sensitivity risks, bias and fairness concerns, and the problem of inaccurate AI outputs known as hallucinations.
Gunn told the committee the groups examined platforms and recommended Microsoft Copilot because it runs in the government cloud, integrates with the city’s Office/SharePoint/OneDrive environment, supports e-discovery and access controls, and lowers licensing cost compared with some standalone AI services. He said Copilot also can surface other commercial models (OpenAI, Gemini) inside the Copilot framework if needed.
Gunn said the city will begin messaging the change this month, assist departments in migrating pilots into the Copilot ecosystem, and phase out or restrict access to other web-based AI tools over the coming months. Committee members asked whether the city currently pays for other licenses; Gunn said most employees use free personal accounts and only a small number of paid licenses (for example, Grammarly) are in place and will be phased out.
Gunn also said the committees will evaluate proposed projects across four dimensions: handling of sensitive/proprietary information, regulatory compliance (including Texas HB149), cost-benefit analysis, and alignment with city priorities. He said workforce training is planned in partnership with the Fort Worth Lab to teach prompting and agent development.
Committee members requested details on membership selection and training; Gunn said membership came from departments already pursuing AI pilots and that representations include public safety, transportation, parks, libraries and IT.
