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Winnebago County IT director urges supervisors to 'trust but verify' when using AI and recommends Copilot under county licensing
Summary
Jennifer, the county IT director, advised supervisors to start small with AI, use Microsoft Copilot under county licensing to ensure records discoverability, craft precise prompts, verify outputs and avoid putting confidential data into public AI tools; she offered training resources and a PDF of internal guidance.
Jennifer, Winnebago County's information technology director, presented practical guidance to supervisors on using artificial intelligence tools responsibly for county business.
She recommended starting with small tasks—summarizing meeting materials, comparing documents and drafting initial resolutions—and emphasized that AI is a research tool that requires human verification. "What you generate is your first draft," she told the board, urging members to check sources and confirm accuracy.
Jennifer recommended Microsoft Copilot linked to county Microsoft 365 accounts for county business because it supports the county's retention and records-discovery practices. She warned that using external consumer tools may create discoverability and records-retention issues if those tools are not covered by county licensing. She also explained risks including hallucinations (incorrect outputs), bias in model results, and the need to avoid submitting confidential or proprietary data to third-party models.
Practical prompting advice included being specific about the county and the desired output format (for example, "Wnebago County, Wisconsin — provide a one-page bulleted list for constituents"), supplying source links when possible, and iterating prompts if results are off-target. Jennifer said the county uses a government commercial cloud (GCC) Copilot license that lags commercial releases but offers additional compliance safeguards.
Supervisors raised questions about property-tax data and whether AI models reliably return local taxation figures; Jennifer advised feeding official county links to the tool and checking results rather than relying on an AI model's uncited response. She promised to distribute a PDF containing the county's internal AI guidance and links to recorded training sessions.
